Wasting Time? The Differentiation of Travel Time in Urban Transport

Weiqiang Lin
Additional contact information
Weiqiang Lin: Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, England

Environment and Planning A, 2012, vol. 44, issue 10, 2477-2492

Abstract: Recent years have seen increasing academic interest in transport and the concept of travel time. In particular, scholars have tried to open up travel time to alternative modes of understanding, taking it beyond its usual productivist associations with waste and useless idleness. The author, however, seeks to understand travel time in a different way. Rather than filling it up with activities, it is argued that travel time must first be recognized as constituted by, and constitutive of, society and its rhythms. As such, the author seeks to unpack its value in context, by thinking through its productions, structuring, and potential effects. With Singapore's urban transport system taken as a case study, the inequitable ways in which travel time is refracted and experienced by different groups of commuters in this fast-paced city are considered. Specifically, how this time has been hastened for some, rescheduled for others, and rendered especially unpredictable for public transit users through various policies and constraints are put into relations. By attending to the unevenness of these differentiated processes, the author argues that a close contextual reading of transport and its manifold rhythms is indispensable if questions surrounding social equity and sustainability are to be adequately addressed.

Keywords: travel time; urban transport; rhythmanalysis; mobilities; social equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/a4525 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:44:y:2012:i:10:p:2477-2492

DOI: 10.1068/a4525

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().