IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v44y2012i10p2477-2492.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wasting Time? The Differentiation of Travel Time in Urban Transport

Author

Listed:
  • Weiqiang Lin

    (Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, England)

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing academic interest in transport and the concept of travel time. In particular, scholars have tried to open up travel time to alternative modes of understanding, taking it beyond its usual productivist associations with waste and useless idleness. The author, however, seeks to understand travel time in a different way. Rather than filling it up with activities, it is argued that travel time must first be recognized as constituted by, and constitutive of, society and its rhythms. As such, the author seeks to unpack its value in context, by thinking through its productions, structuring, and potential effects. With Singapore's urban transport system taken as a case study, the inequitable ways in which travel time is refracted and experienced by different groups of commuters in this fast-paced city are considered. Specifically, how this time has been hastened for some, rescheduled for others, and rendered especially unpredictable for public transit users through various policies and constraints are put into relations. By attending to the unevenness of these differentiated processes, the author argues that a close contextual reading of transport and its manifold rhythms is indispensable if questions surrounding social equity and sustainability are to be adequately addressed.

Suggested Citation

  • Weiqiang Lin, 2012. "Wasting Time? The Differentiation of Travel Time in Urban Transport," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(10), pages 2477-2492, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:10:p:2477-2492
    DOI: 10.1068/a4525
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a4525
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/a4525?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Koh, Winston T. H., 2003. "Control of vehicle ownership and market competition: theory and Singapore's experience with the vehicle quota system," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 749-770, November.
    2. Ermisch, J. F. & Huff, W. G., 1999. "Hypergrowth in an East Asian NIC: Public policy and capital accumulation in Singapore," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 27(1), pages 21-38, January.
    3. Phang, Sock-Yong, 2003. "Strategic development of airport and rail infrastructure: the case of Singapore," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 27-33, January.
    4. Richard Arnott & Tilmann Rave & Ronnie Schöb, 2005. "Alleviating Urban Traffic Congestion," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262012197, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cohen, Tom & Shrewsbury, John, 2018. "A novel metric for responding to transport inequality," OSF Preprints 8ypht, Center for Open Science.
    2. Tim Cresswell, 2016. "Afterword – Asian mobilities/Asian frictions?," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(6), pages 1082-1086, June.
    3. Patricia Mokhtarian & Francis Papon & Matthieu Goulard & Marco Diana, 2015. "What makes travel pleasant and/or tiring? An investigation based on the French National Travel Survey," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(6), pages 1103-1128, November.
    4. Doody, Brendan J., 2020. "Becoming ‘a Londoner’: Migrants’ experiences and habits of everyday (im)mobilities over the life course," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    5. Kevin Maréchal, 2018. "Recasting the understanding of habits for behaviour-oriented policies in transportation," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/270475, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    6. Cohen, Tom, 2020. "Tools for addressing transport inequality: A novel variant of accessibility measurement," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    7. Yongcheng Wang & Yiik Diew Wong & Kelvin Goh, 2021. "Perceived importance of inclusive street dimensions: a public questionnaire survey from a vision(ing) perspective," Transportation, Springer, vol. 48(2), pages 699-721, April.
    8. Kevin Marechal, 2018. "Recasting the Understanding of Habits for Behaviour-Oriented Policies in Transportation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-14, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Santos, Georgina & Li, Wai Wing & Koh, Winston T.H, 2004. "9. Transport Policies In Singapore," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 209-235, January.
    2. Bruno De Borger & Bart Wuyts, 2009. "Commuting, Transport Tax Reform and the Labour Market: Employer-paid Parking and the Relative Efficiency of Revenue Recycling Instruments," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 46(1), pages 213-233, January.
    3. BADALYAN, Gohar & HERZFELD, Thomas & RAJCANIOVA, Miroslava, 2014. "Transport Infrastructure And Economic Growth: Panel Data Approach For Armenia, Georgia And Turkey," Review of Agricultural and Applied Economics (RAAE), Faculty of Economics and Management, Slovak Agricultural University in Nitra, vol. 17(2), pages 1-10, October.
    4. Gössling, Stefan, 2016. "Urban transport justice," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 1-9.
    5. Arnott, Richard, 2007. "Congestion tolling with agglomeration externalities," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 187-203, September.
    6. Ian W.H. Parry, 2009. "Pricing Urban Congestion," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 461-484, September.
    7. Arnott, Richard & Shevyakhova, Elizaveta, 2014. "Tenancy rent control and credible commitment in maintenance," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 72-85.
    8. Parry, Ian, 2015. "Designing Fiscal Policy to Address the External Costs of Energy," International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics, now publishers, vol. 8(1), pages 1-56, May.
    9. Tumbenthung Y. Humtsoe, 2020. "From pathways to roadways: Issues and challenges of road transport in Nagaland," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 51(3), pages 1417-1436, September.
    10. Talley, Wayne K. & Ng, ManWo, 2016. "Port multi-service congestion," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 66-70.
    11. repec:ilo:ilowps:413008 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Nakagawa, Dai & Aoyama, Yoshitaka & Ito, Tadashi & Nishizawa, Hiroyuki, 2005. "Assessment of passenger benefits brought about by international airport projects," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 12(6), pages 512-524, November.
    13. Tsekeris, Theodore, 2014. "Multi-sectoral interdependencies of regional public infrastructure investments," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 263-272.
    14. Mougeot Michel & Schwartz Sonia, 2018. "A Discriminatory Mechanism to Reduce Urban Congestion," German Economic Review, De Gruyter, vol. 19(2), pages 190-208, May.
    15. John Fernald & Brent Neiman, 2011. "Growth Accounting with Misallocation: Or, Doing Less with More in Singapore," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(2), pages 29-74, April.
    16. Shihe Fu & V Brian Viard, 2019. "Commute costs and labor supply: evidence from a satellite campus," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(3), pages 723-752.
    17. Gutiérrez-i-Puigarnau, Eva & van Ommeren, Jos N., 2010. "Labour supply and commuting," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 82-89, July.
    18. Xin Li & Yongsheng Qian & Junwei Zeng & Xuting Wei & Xiaoping Guang, 2022. "Measurement of Street Network Structure in Strip Cities: A Case Study of Lanzhou, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-17, February.
    19. Hao, Han & Wang, Hewu & Ouyang, Minggao, 2011. "Comparison of policies on vehicle ownership and use between Beijing and Shanghai and their impacts on fuel consumption by passenger vehicles," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 1016-1021, February.
    20. Wilfredo Yushimito & Xuegang Ban & José Holguín-Veras, 2015. "Correcting the Market Failure in Work Trips with Work Rescheduling: An Analysis Using Bi-level Models for the Firm-workers Interplay," Networks and Spatial Economics, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 883-915, September.
    21. W. Bowman Cutter & Sofia F. Franco, 2012. "The uneasy case for lower Parking Standards," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp564, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:10:p:2477-2492. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.