Journey quality could be considered as an important determinant of travel behaviour. For example, it is reasonable to expect that poor journey quality could act as a deterrent to mode or route choice or as a disincentive to make a journey. Travel decisions may be based on the weakest link in the journey and addressing poor quality travel elements may therefore remove barriers to travel.
In transport appraisal there is a debate as to whether willingness to pay for quality benefits should be included in the TEE analysis. However, it is invariably the case that the costs of quality improvements are subsumed within option costs. By not including perceived benefits, there would be a problem of bias against those options that have an explicit objective to improve quality. Willingness to pay for quality benefits has been investigated through stated preference research but the absence of definitive values for quality improvements persists. Consequently, quality benefits should be assessed qualitatively in the TEE analysis.
