On the impact of vehicle automation on the value of travel time while performing work and leisure activities in a car: Theoretical insights and results from a stated preference survey – A comment

This note revises the theoretical insights concerning the Value of Travel Time for automated vehicles as derived in a recent paper in this journal (Correia et al., 2019). That paper concluded that Value of Travel Time in an automated vehicle should be lower than in a conventional vehicle by salary rate, if the traveller works during the trip, and unchanged compared to conventional vehicles, if the traveller engages in leisure activities while travelling. However, these conclusions have limited validity, because the models, upon which they are based, contain a term whose interpretation differs across the models. This note clarifies this interpretation and offers an alternative extended model, which allows comparison across models. The alternative model provides an intuitive result: the facilitation-level of on-board activities determines the reduction of the Value of Travel Time in the automated vehicle. If automated vehicles provide identical work or leisure experience to out-of-vehicle locations, then the opportunity costs of travel time are erased and the Value of Travel Time equals the intrinsic costs of travel, which is strictly smaller than the Value of Travel Time in a conventional vehicle.