©Antti Talvitie, 2020
Rail Factor and Realism of the Unconscious
Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives, 6 (2020) 100144
Antti Talvitie (aptalvitie(at)gmail.com)
Aalto University, Espoo, Finland
ABSTRACT
The paper reviews the spoken but unknown behavioral ‘rail factor’ that may bias travel forecasts toward rail, or favor investments in urban rail, foster economic development, or add to satisfaction of travel. The rail factor hypothesis is examined from cognitive and unconscious points of view. The former is based on the mode specific constants in mode choice models, types of travel time data, values of travel time reductions, and citizen preferences in two urban transport corridors. The unconscious view is based on Freud’s conception of the unconscious and his and others’ perceptions about rail travel and ‘knowledge illusion’. It is pointed out that the cognitive factors already broach the unconscious and its unobservable dynamics. The realism of the unconscious is related to the cognitive findings via a literature review of the most typical genres on rail factor research.
The findings indicate that a behavioral rail factor may exist in planning and
derives from the pleasure principle, while the revealed preferences in models, based
on the reality principle, contraindicate the presence of a rail factor. The paper calls for perceptive public
participation processes, for a greater scope of issues to help reinforce the
reality principle in planning transport projects, and for explicit recognition
of the unconscious (motives) in Transport infrastructure and service decisions.
Article history: Received 5 August 2019, Received in revised form 19 March 2020, Accepted 1 June 2020, Available online 13 June 2020
Keywords: Rail factor, Mode choice, Transport planning, Cognition, Unconscious, Reality principle
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