Commute Distance Research Articles

Who are Bicyclists? Why and how much are they Bicycling?

The factors influencing the decision to bicycle are explored and unraveled to inform the development of appropriate and effective strategies to increase bicycling and promote the health of individuals and of the environment. The data used in the analysis were drawn from a survey of Texas bicyclists, and the study includes a comprehensive explanatory analysis of bicyclists and their bicycling habits. Various econometric models are used to evaluate the determinants of bicyclists’ perception for safety and quality issues and the frequency of bicycling for commute and noncommute purposes. The results of the study indicate that the perceptions of the quality of bicycle facilities and safety from traffic crashes show significant variation depending on bicyclists’ demographic and work characteristics and bicycle amenities and facilities on the commute route and at the workplace. Bicyclist demographics (gender, age, education level, commute distance), household demographics (number of automobiles, number of bicycles, number of children), residential location and season, bicycle amenities at work (bicycle racks, showers), bicyclist perceptions of the overall quality of bicycle facilities, and bicycle-use characteristics affect commute and noncommute bicycling frequency. These study results can assist in the development of informed policies to increase commute and noncommute bicycling, and the results highlight the ongoing need for detailed surveys to understand bicycling behavior.

Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power

Author(s): Rupert, Peter; Stancanelli, Elena G F; Wasmer, Etienne | Abstract: A search model of the labor market is augmented to include commuting time to work. The theory posits that wages are positively related to commute distance, by a factor itself depending negatively on the bargaining power of workers. Since not all combinations of distance and wages are accepted, there is non-random selection of accepted job offers. We build on these ingredients to explore in the data the relationship between wages and commute time. We find that neglecting to account for this selection will bias downward the wage impact of commuting, and marginally affect the coefficients on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also use the theory to calculate the bargaining power of workers which largely varies depending on demographic groups: it appears to be much larger for men than that for women and that the bargaining power of women with young children is essentially zero.

Commuting, Wages and Bargaining Power

A search model of the labor market is augmented to include commuting time to work. The theory posits that wages are positively related to commute distance, by a factor itself depending negatively on the bargaining power of workers. Since not all combinations of distance and wages are accepted, there is non-random selection of accepted job offers. We build on these ingredients to explore in the data the relationship between wages and commute time . We find that neglecting to account for this selection will bias downward the wage impact of commuting, and marginally affect the coefficients on education, age and gender. The correlation between the residuals of the selectivity equation and the distance equation is -0.70, showing the large impact of commute time on job acceptance decisions. We also use the theory to calculate the bargaining power of workers which largely varies depending on demographic groups: it appears to be much larger for men than that for women and that the bargaining power of women with oung children is essentially zero.

Residential choice location, gender and the commute trip to work in Tel Aviv

This paper investigates various factors influencing individual’s choice of residence location and the role of the commute trip on that decision. It tries to identify how residential decisions are influenced by socio-economics variables and neighborhood characteristics with emphasis on behavioral differences between the genders. The analysis is based on the Israel Census data for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and uses both descriptive statistics and estimation of a logit choice model. The results show the important of both the area characteristics and the commute distance in choosing residential location and significant differences between men and women. The importance of commute distance in residential location choice decreases with increase in one’s level of income, level of education, and number of car in one’s household. The results are consistent with existing research literature with new emphasis on the effect of income.

Commuting time stability: A test of a co-location hypothesis

During the past few decades, the populations of many US and European cities have shown the same residence and workplace mobility patterns: Annually, approximately 10% of the population changed residences and approximately 20% of employed workers changed workplaces within the same metropolitan area. Even though the Seattle metropolitan region experienced a substantial amount of residential and workplace mobility and a boom in employment and population in the 1990s, the morning commute time and distance was roughly constant. To explain this situation, researchers have proposed a co-location hypothesis, that is, residents and workers will change their residence or workplace or both adapt to worsening congestion. This research attempted to shed light on the mechanism of the co-location hypothesis using the Puget Sound Transportation Panel data consisting of seven waves of two consecutive years between 1989 and 1997 conducted by the Puget Sound Regional Council. Because most studies used cross-sectional work trip data to study location and commuting, the underlying relationship between location and commuting was limited. This study attempted to understand commuting patterns by residential and workplace changers. The study found that the commuting patterns of residence and workplace location changers were the same and this was reinforced by existing gravity model. Particularly, when workers change their locations, they prefer similar commuting zone (i.e., time and distance) compared to their previous commuting zone. These behaviors caused the average commute time and distance to be stable, regardless of high residence and workplace mobility, and the rapid growth of employment and population.

Accessibility Trade-Offs in Household Residential Location Decisions

The literature for residential location choice is deficient in two aspects. First, many studies model location choice as a static choice, with no memory of the past. Second, current understanding of household tradeoffs between attributes is limited. These two issues are addressed by developing and estimating a residential location model that accounts for prior locations by using the Puget Sound Panel (1989–2002) data set. Four types of accessibility attributes are examined: work, open space, retail opportunity, and recreation. A comparison between the proposed model and the existing literature model demonstrates the superiority of the former. Prior commute distance, open space, and recreation opportunity are all shown to influence current residential location choices.

Telecommuting and residential locational preferences: a case study of the Netherlands

Traditionally, along with stages of the life cycle and changes in people’s financial status and their household composition, the commute distance has been identified as one of the main explanatory factors for residential locational preferences and subsequent migration flows. In the Netherlands, telecommuting is rapidly becoming popular and is expected to affect residential locational preferences. A hypothesis that can be raised is that telecommuting has an impact on the effect that commute distance has on residential preferences. Based on this hypothesis, this paper investigates the role of telecommuting alongside the traditional factors currently explaining residential locational preferences. The paper provides evidence that, in the Netherlands, telecommuting has enabled people to commute longer distances. The effect of telecommuting on the probability of relocating, however, is not significant. Telecommuting appears to have a limited effect on residential location preferences, but traditional factors, such as life cycle stages, remain the dominant explanatory factors.

Exploratory mapping of commuter flows in England and Wales

The paper uses the origin–destination commute data published from the 1991 and 2001 Census to explore the developments in commuting and interaction patterns within England and Wales. Focus is on the geographical variations and a map of commuter flows is presented. Commuting is stretched out along a national corridor from London to Manchester. An important change between 1991 and 2001 is a widening of the corridor that can be explained as the result of the deconcentration of population and jobs in combination with increasing commute distances allowing rural areas to be connected with the jobs and services of the centres in the corridor.

Travel behavior and objectively measured urban design variables: Associations for adults traveling to work

Mixed land use, residential density, street connectivity, and commute distance have been identified as potential variables affecting transport-related physical activity (TPA) behaviors. In this study, objectively measured urban design variables and TPA behaviors for adults who commuted to an occupation ( n=364) were examined. Utilitarian walking and cycling for other purposes were not investigated. Commute distance was negatively associated with TPA behaviors. Logistic regression analysis identified respondents who commuted through the most connected streets were more likely to engage in TPA modes to access their occupation (OR=6.9) when compared to those traveling along the least connected. No other associations between TPA behaviors and urban variables were shown. Improved street connectivity and reduced commute distances will likely support TPA.

Objectively Measured Commute Distance Related to Actual and Perceived Travel Modes to Place of Work/Study

Objectively Measured Commute Distance Related to Actual and Perceived Travel Modes to Place of Work/Study

Costs and Benefits of Home-Based Telecommuting: A Monte Carlo Simulation Model Incorporating Telecommuter, Employer, and Public Sector Perspectives

This paper reviews and utilizes the current body of telecommuting related research to study the costs and benefits of home-based telecommuting. Monte Carlo simulation methods were utilized to help account for costs or benefits that remain highly variable or have not been well documented by past research. This study illustrates the conditions under which the business case for telecommuting is supported or weakened. Conditions for the employee the telecommuter are generally most favorable when: 1 the employer bears the equipment cost; 2 commute distances are above average; 3 the commute vehicle has below-average fuel economy; 4 travel time is highly valued; and 5 telecommuting is frequent, while conditions for the employer are most favorable when: 1 the telecommuter bears the equipment cost; 2 there is low telecommuter attrition; 3 the employee is highly productive on telecommuting days; 4 the employee's time is highly valued; and 5 telecommuting is frequent. For the employer, telecommuting is also favorable if parking and office space savings are realized. While public sector benefits are conceivable, they remain insignificant in most situations because the impacts on the transportation network are probably not concentrated enough over a specific transportation corridor to realize infrastructure benefits and not quantified or valued enough within a regional air district to realize significant air quality benefits. Further, the public sector loses fuel tax revenue. Altogether, this paper provides insight into the potential public sector impacts of telecommuting, as well as the federal, state, regional, and local public policy implications that arise when telecommuting is considered among other transportation demand management alternatives.

Interactions between Residential Relocations, Life Course Events, and Daily Commute Distances

This paper presents results from a project investigating interdependencies among residential changes, other life course events, and transport. The main goal is to identify specific relocations and other key events during a person's life with a significant impact on changes in travel behavior. With the theoretical background of the mobility biographies approach–assuming that travel behavior is mainly habitual–the paper attempts to deliver a basis for potential soft policy intervention measures to change daily travel behavior toward a more sustainable mobility. The empirical basis is the German Socio-Economic Panel. By analyzing longitudinal data, it is possible to allocate different key events during the life course to change a person's mobility behavior. Because total distances traveled are partly based on daily commute distances, changes in the journey-to-work distance were used to indicate changes in travel behavior. Results of a linear regression model for change in commute distance show a significant influence from the previous home-to-work distance or other travel patterns such as mode choice and accessibility of public transport. Besides sociodemographic factors like income, the importance of life course events such as specific relocations and professional changes can also be documented. Spatial structure of the destination (regional core versus noncore, specific type of neighborhood or house) also has a significant impact on commute distances.

Objectively Measured Commute Distance: Associations with Actual Travel Modes and Perceptions to Place of Work or Study in Auckland, New Zealand

Little is known about the relationships between objectively measured commute distance with actual and perceived transport-related physical activity (TPA) engagement. A telephone survey assessed travel behaviors to place of work/study within an adult sample (n = 772) residing in New Zealand. Overall, 50% of respondents perceived they could, and 10% of the sample actually did, use TPA modes to commute to their occupation for distances less than 5 km. Differences between TPA perceptions and engagement existed for all distance classifications, and prevalence declined as distances increased. Differences between TPA engagement and perceptions were evident. Actual and perceived TPA engagement levels declined as commute distance increased.

Commute Mode Choice in a Developing Country

This paper investigates mode choice decisions of workers in Chennai City, a metropolis in India. Mode choice in developing countries such as India may differ significantly from their developed counterparts in several respects. These differences pertain to vehicle types (two-wheelers versus four-wheelers), vehicle ownership levels and growth, wide variation in socioeconomic characteristics, perception of subjective factors, and variability in choice set, among other factors. Toward understanding these differences, this paper investigates the role of the following factors on mode choice: (a) differences between mode choice propensity for two-wheelers and four-wheelers; (b) differences in sensitivity to travel time and cost across different user groups based on captivity effects [captive (no vehicles), semicaptive (fewer vehicles than workers), and choice segments]; (c) alternative means of representing the unavailability or infeasibility of some alternatives to some users; and (d) the influence of subjective factors. To achieve these objectives, a series of disaggregate mode choice models are developed to capture the aforementioned effects, on the basis of data from 550 workers in Chennai City. Six alternatives are considered: two-wheeler, car, bus, train, nonmotorized, and other modes. The empirical results underscore significant variations in two-wheeler and car choice propensities. Furthermore, significant differences in sensitivity to travel time, cost, and vehicle availability are observed across different user segments. The cost sensitivity to various modes reduces as the commute distance increases. Results indicate that disregarding the aforementioned effects can lead to poor model fit, biased coefficients, and erroneous forecasts. These findings have important implications for the evaluation of transit ridership improvement strategies and demand forecasting in developing countries.

The intra-household choices regarding commuting and housing

This paper is an empirical analysis of the relationships between commuting decisions of spouses in dual-income households, where the role of housing and housing tenure is taken into account. The study is based on a large survey of US commuters and actual commuting and housing choices. Household commuting decisions are analyzed together with housing choices using the data from the 2001 American Housing Survey. A sample of dual-career spouses who commute to work by car only is used to explore the inter-relationship between male and female commuting decisions in such households and the effect of housing choices on their commuting. The inter-relationships between spousal commuting decisions are examined separately for the two forms of housing tenure: ownership and renting. In general, men commute further than women and owners commute further than renters. It is shown that for both renters and homeowners, journeys to work by men and women in such dual-earner households appear to be “complements” and not “substitutes”. This means that commute trips are jointly chosen to be longer (or shorter) for both spouses, as part of household selection of preferred housing and neighborhood characteristics. The residuals of equations explaining commute times and commute distances for men are strongly positively correlated with those for women. Many of the explanatory factors affect the men and women in similar ways. In particular, housing value is positively correlated with commute times and distances for both genders. The commute distance for women owners appears more sensitive to housing value than that of men, meaning women adjust their trips to work even more so than men do, as part of obtaining better housing. For both homeowners and renters, longer commute distances were correlated with higher salaries for both spouses. Somewhat surprisingly, it was found that commuting distances for women are similarly or even more sensitive to income increments than are those of men. Household size appears to affect women who own housing in ways opposite from those who rent. Other housing and neighborhood factors also affect the joint commuting decisions of these men and women.

Neighborhood design and vehicle type choice: Evidence from Northern California

Previous studies have found that suburban development is associated with the unbalanced choice of light duty trucks. The specific aspects of the built environment that influence vehicle choice, however, have not been well-established. Further, these studies have not shed much light on the underlying direction of causality: whether neighborhood designs themselves, as opposed to preferences for neighborhood characteristics or attitudes towards travel, more strongly influence individuals’ decisions regarding vehicle type. Using a sample from Northern California, this study investigated the relationship between neighborhood design and vehicle type choice, controlling for residential self-selection. Correlation analyses showed that neighborhood design has a strong association with vehicle type choice. Specifically, traditional neighborhood designs are correlated with the choice of passenger cars, while suburban designs are associated with the choice of light duty trucks. The nested logit model suggests that sociodemographic and attitudinal factors play an important role, and that an outdoor spaciousness measure (based on perceptions of yard sizes and off-street parking availability) and commute distance also impact vehicle type choice after controlling for those other influences. This study, therefore, supports the premise that land use policies have at least some potential to reduce the choice of light duty trucks, thereby reducing emissions.

Changing travel to work patterns in South East England

The Greater South East England region of the UK constitutes a “global mega-city region”. The UK Government’s 2003 Sustainable Communities strategy proposes major new growth centres in South East England at Ashford, Milton Keynes, Stansted, Cambridge and Thames Gateway. These, along with the upgrade of the West Coast Main Line in 2004 and the completion of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link in 2007, could have major impacts on commuting patterns. To understand the effect of these changes on commute distance and mode choice, the relationships between travel-to-work patterns and socio-economic and land-use characteristics are examined. The analysis suggests that the creation of the new growth centres may result in increased car use but is unlikely to result in longer journeys to work.

Telecommuting, Residential Location, and Commute-Distance Traveled: Evidence from State of California Employees

This study analyzes retrospective data on telecommuting and residential and job location changes over a ten-year period, from 218 employees (62 current telecommuters, 35 former telecommuters, and 121 people who had never telecommuted) of six California state government agencies which had actively participated in the well-known pilot program of 1988–90. We compare estimates of the total commute person-miles traveled by telecommuters with those of nontelecommuters, on a quarterly basis. Key findings include the following. One-way commute distances were higher for telecommuters than for nontelecommuters, consistent with prior empirical evidence and with expectation. Average telecommuting frequency declined over time; several explanations are proposed, but cannot be properly tested with these data. The first two findings notwithstanding, the average quarterly per capita total commute distances were generally lower for telecommuters than for nontelecommuters, indicating that they telecommute often enough to more than compensate for their longer one-way commutes. We cannot say from these results whether the ability to telecommute is itself prompting individuals to move farther away, or whether telecommuting is simply more attractive to people who already live farther from work for other reasons. Even if the first is true, however, and telecommuting is the ‘problem’, it also appears to be the solution: that is, it enables people to achieve a desired but more distant residential location without a net increase in commute travel.

The Impact of Metropolitan Structure on Commute Behavior in the Netherlands: A Multilevel Approach

ABSTRACT This paper documents the investigation of the impact of metropolitan structure on the commute behavior of urban residents in the Netherlands. Not only has the impact of monocentrism versus polycentrism been analyzed, but the influence of metropolitan density and size has also been considered, together with the ratio of employment to population and the growth of the population and employment. Furthermore, data are used at a variety of levels of analysis ranging from the individual worker to the metropolitan region rather than being drawn from aggregate level statistics alone. Multilevel regression modeling is applied to take account of the interdependencies among these levels of aggregation. With regard to mode choice, the results indicate that the probability of driving an auto to work is lower in employment‐rich metropolitan regions, and rises as the number of jobs per resident has grown strongly. Furthermore, women in most polycentric regions are less likely to commute as an auto driver. All else being equal, commute distances and times for auto drivers are longer in most polycentric regions than in monocentric urban areas. In addition, commute time as an auto driver rises with metropolitan size, whereas commute distance depends on employment density and the growth of the number of jobs per resident. The investigation shows that metropolitan structure, although significantly influencing commute patterns, explains only a small part of the variation of individuals’ commute behavior.

Commuting, congestion, and employment dispersal in cities with mixed land use

For centuries, cities have been modeled as having centered employment—scarce access to which generates land rent. This paper first presents some new empirical evidence that in US cities actual employment turns out to be almost as dispersed as residences. This range of urban forms is generated with analytic ease in a model that assumes land can have “mixed” rather than exclusive use at any location. The model has firms trading off a central-agglomeration force against the lower wages that accompany shorter commuting distances in peripheral locations. At one extreme, with very high agglomerative forces, employment is approximately centered, with long commute distances and high congestion levels. At the other extreme, lower agglomerative forces lead to employment that is completely dispersed, commute distances of zero and the absence of congestion. Maximizing output-minus-congestion never leads to a pattern of land mixing where employment is fully dispersed. A market model, however, often does if the mix at each location is based on the relative magnitude of the land rent offered from residential as opposed to commercial uses.