Chiswickite - formerly The Croydonian

You, me, the bod in the next cubicle / corner office, all of us, our time is worth the princely sum of five pounds and an all important four pence per hour. And how do we know this, because the government, in the person of Paul Clark, says so:

Jo Swinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he has commissioned or evaluated research on the effect of commuting times on levels of well-being. [251002]

Paul Clark: Yes. Research into people’s willingness-to-pay for travel time savings suggests that, on average, commuters value travel time at a rate of £5.04 per hour. This value is ordinarily used to aid decision making on infrastructure investments because many of the benefits reflect reduced delays for commuters. However it also provides an indication of the importance that people place on the time taken to commute to work.

OK, so I have overegged the pudding just a touch, but this does strike me as pretty worthless research in that there are an awful lot of factors at work in a cost benefit analysis of any given journey.

Labels: Air travel, Parliament

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at 9:09 am. You can skip to the end and leave a response.