Spatial choices and excess commuting: a case study of bank tellers in Bogotá, Colombia

Abstract

This study uses disaggregate data from Bogotá, Colombia to examine the presumption that individuals engaging in excess commuting have satisfactorily traded commuting for other location benefits. By estimating involuntary and voluntary excess commuting, the study illustrates that deviations from the minimum commute implied by the urban spatial structure are expected due to temporal and structural constraints, even when the journey-to-work is a household’s only locational concern. Therefore, the usefulness of excess commuting estimates for informing policy choices hinging on the connection between transportation and land use would increase if the voluntary and involuntary components of excess commuting were incorporated explicitly into such calculations. Results suggest that future excess commuting research should devote additional attention to contextual factors constraining individual spatial choices.