In September last year, the UK Department for Transport issued a report, "Public experiences of and attitudes towards rail travel: 2006 and 2009".

In section 7.9, they discuss some interesting responses to the question, "Why did you use train for your last long distance train journey?".

Almost one in 10 of the respondents mentioned that they chose rail because it gave them the opportunity to do things while travelling.

68% had read, 52% had looked at the view, 44% ate or drank and 41% had chatted to travelling companions. 38% had used mobile phones and 28% listened to music. 16% had done work for their job while travelling.

Interesting!

When doing an economic evaluation of a transport investment scheme, it is conventional to put in money for the value of time savings brought about by the scheme. This is because time spent travelling is viewed as wasted - it's a cost. So if your journey takes less time, that's a benefit: time is saved so you can do more with it.

Certainly this is reasonable for car travel (unless, like too many, you indulge in 'distracted driving' - or you have a chauffeur!). It's reasonably true for air travel - certainly for short-haul air travel, where your overall end to end journey is so broken up you can't do anything much with it.

However, for a long-ish train journey, is it true that travelling time is a cost? If you can and do work, it can be a benefit. Especially if no-one is using a mobile phone or radio and distracting you!

Certainly I find a train a very conducive area for complex reading or writing.

And should this change the way we do transport evaluations? If in-train time has a positive value and in-vehicle time for air or road has a negative value, perhaps this should be reflected in evaluations?

Although, obviously, not to the point where it's not worth speeding up trains because it would reduce the working time of the passengers!