The Effects of Transport Accessibility and Jobs–Housing Balance on Commuting Time: Evidence from Beijing

Abstract

Increases in commuting time have caused serious social and environmental problems in a physically fragmentizing mega-city. Some policy-makers attend to solve commuting-related problems through alternative land-use policies, in particular mixed land use and multi-functional structures, rather than mere transport programmes. This paper investigates the effects of the jobs–housing balance on commuting time at the community level in Beijing. The paper puts forward a new indicator of home-based job proximity to measure the jobs–housing balance. A 1500 household-based travel data set was used to aggregate the average commuting time of the 60 communities studied. Based on the results of a correlation analysis, findings suggest that home-based job proximity has the strongest significantly negative relationship with average community commuting time. In fact, the results of a two-step regression analysis suggest that 68.6% of the changes in average commuting time are explained overwhelmingly by the home-based job proximity variable. However, there are no significant associations between average commuting time and the variables of local public transport accessibility and private vehicle transport accessibility. Obviously, current urban policy, which relies predominantly on ambitious and expensive programmes of transport infrastructure provision must be rethought in Beijing. Improving the jobs–housing balance through the implemention of compact land development may be an alternative to reducing overall commuting duration.