Phone call elasticity of city travel in Ahmedabad

The new era of Information and Communication Technologies ICT enables people to communicate and interact with each other in different manner, changing the way they conduct their lives. This change has significant implications on their physical travels. The relationship between ICTs and travel is complex and sometimes indirect. This paper aims to better understand this complex relationship by empirically analyzing the substitution versus additive effects of phone calls on physical distance traveled by individuals. This is done by analyzing the phone call elasticity of physical travel. The analysis also studies the relevance of social ties in Ahmedabad, India, as a source of explanation of social activity, thus travel, undertaken by individuals. Social Network Analysis (SNA) allows capturing social determinants that affect travel in a way socio-demographics do not capture. The phone call elasticities show a variation among different people which can be connected to the type of trips that are substituted. The substituted trips are related to the social networks of individuals. Decision makers can use this tool to designing their travel and ICT policies in a novel way.