Interactions between Rail and Car in the Inter-Urban Leisure Travel Market in Great Britain

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that the potential for diverting inter-urban leisure travellers from car to rail is lower when rail services are improved instead of applying restrictive measures to reduce car use. This is because of the low cross-elasticities of demand for car with respect to rail characteristics. It is very important that attention is paid to identifying the appropriate functional form of the model, particularly when modelling the effects of large changes, or when seeking to apply the model to situations with different cross-sectional characteristics. It is also important to distinguish between people travelling alone and people travelling in a group.