Travel time seems to get folks worked up so I have never charged for it. However, I generally spend the time on a flight reviewing client documents and so on: billable activity. For some reason I don't like the idea of charging different rates for different kinds of time but I suppose my approach works out roughly the same as yours in the end.
The only instance where I tried to charge for travel time was an engagement where I had to travel to Atlanta to do a very small amount of work for a very big law firm. Since it was going to take me a day to get there and a day to return, to do at best one day's work, I said I needed to charge for my travel time. They informed me that lawyers NEVER charge for travel time (assertion mostly disputed by my lawyer friends, but...whatever) and so they couldn't bill my travel time back to their clients. They said however that they could consider a higher rate for my billed time. This discussion went on for a while with the end result I billed them at something like 3X my regular rate but no travel time. They thought this was just fine.
Together we beat a patent troll so I probably would have done the work for free ;)
The only instance where I tried to charge for travel time was an engagement where I had to travel to Atlanta to do a very small amount of work for a very big law firm. Since it was going to take me a day to get there and a day to return, to do at best one day's work, I said I needed to charge for my travel time. They informed me that lawyers NEVER charge for travel time (assertion mostly disputed by my lawyer friends, but...whatever) and so they couldn't bill my travel time back to their clients. They said however that they could consider a higher rate for my billed time. This discussion went on for a while with the end result I billed them at something like 3X my regular rate but no travel time. They thought this was just fine.
Together we beat a patent troll so I probably would have done the work for free ;)