Measuring the Invisible Journey

Standard measures of commute time capture movement but not the waiting, transferring and uncertainty that surround it. Drawing on a week-long travel-diary study of 640 Lagos residents, this article shows that unmeasured time accounts for close to a third of an average journey, and that this unmeasured time predicts perceived accessibility more strongly than measured travel time alone. We argue that transport planning built on travel-time figures systematically undercounts the true cost of a journey.