Estimating the Value of Travel Time for Tehran-Tabriz Passengers with Consideration of New Tabriz-Miyaneh Railroad

Transportation is among the most important sectors of any economy and investment in transportation infrastructure can cause significant growth in the economy. There should be vast economic and engineering research in order to reach a conclusion on investment decision for every transportation project. One of the most important factors in economic evaluation of transportation projects is travel time reduction. Due to high national importance of Tabriz-Miyaneh Railroad project, the goal of this study is to investigate the value of travel time for Tabriz-Tehran passengers with the assumption of new Tabriz-Miyaneh train being operational. To do so, after collecting stated preference data, multinomial logit models for mode choice in Tabriz-Tehran trips were estimated. 3 logit models with different specifications in utility function were estimated. The coefficients of travel time and travel cost were statistically significant with expected signs in all of the estimated models. Average value of travel time and value of travel time for different income groups were estimated based on the estimation results of these models. The average value of travel time for the model with highest level of significance for willingness to pay estimation was equal to 149 thousand Tomans per hour.