The transport in our time-budget

Abstract

Do we save time with our faster transport modes? The answer is, no. The authors answered this question after comparing the average daily per capita transport time-use based on the 1986/87, the 1999/00, and the 2009/10 Hungarian time-budget survey. The average time-use remained between 60 and 65 minutes, same as it was in 1977. During the period studied, the share of the motor/car time-use approximately doubled in the total transport time-use, while the other modes (walking, cycling, and public transports) decreased proportionally. In the same period, there was a wide distribution in the per capita daily transport time-use data influenced by geographical destination choice (in space and time)-and by demographic (age, gender), spatial (county, settlement status), and social (activity, qualification) variables. The paper analysed the effect of the latter explanatory variables on the heterogeneity of the transport time-use. The gender and activity variables can explain motor/car time-use differences; geography and settlement status the bicycle-, and the settlement status also the public transport time-use differences. However, all the explanatory variables analysed could only explain 10% of the divergences.