Suburbanization and transit-oriented development in China

The suburbanization of large Chinese cities has placed many residents in locations that are far less accessible than their prior residences, requiring motorized travel. This paper examines the impacts of relocation to outlying areas on job accessibility, commuting mode choice, and commuting durations based on a current-day and retrospective survey of recent movers to three suburban neighborhoods in Shanghai. Job accessibility levels were found to decline dramatically following the move, matched by increased motorized travel and longer commute durations. Relocating to a suburban area near a metrorail station, however, was found to moderate losses in job accessibility and for many, encourage switches from non-motorized to transit commuting. We conclude that transit-oriented development holds considerable promise for placing rapidly suburbanizing Chinese cities on a more sustainable pathway.     

New spatial patterns of mobility within the metropolitan area of Madrid: Towards more complex and dispersed flow networks

Changing processes in metropolitan areas are producing more extended, discontinuous, dispersed and fragmented spaces. As a result, spatial patterns of mobility are changing too. By using data from daily mobility surveys, this paper analyses the processes of peripherisation of mobility (more suburban trips), dispersion of flows and increase of trip length and travel time in the metropolitan area of Madrid.     

Impacts of urban sprawl and commuting: a modelling study for Italy

This paper aims to analyse empirically the intricate relationship between urban sprawl and commuting, a process that started a few decades ago in Italy. Using a mobility impact index based on commuting data for 1981 and 1991, we quantify the impact of commuting for seven major Italian urban areas, comprising in total 739 municipalities (communes). Our modelling experiment highlights the effect of sprawl at the commune level, while taking into account the variability of communes across geographical location and level of polycentrism. Causal relationships between spatial developments and explanatory factors related to changes in urban density are analysed using multivariate cross-section regression analysis and Causal Path Analysis (CPA). Our empirical results confirm the expectation that sprawl is accompanied by intensive travel movements and associated environmental effects.     

Geographies of run-commuting in the UK

Drawing on the first academic research into run-commuting, this paper places running more firmly on the agenda within transport studies. Run-commuting is a rapidly growing mobile practice in which people run between work and home. Academically, very little is known about the practice, with scant research conducted into it. This paper begins to rectify this by critically exploring the geographies of run-commuting in the UK and the politics of mobility that emerge from this. Based on a survey of 287 UK run-commuters, this paper explores the broader trends and patterns within the locations, demographics and movements of run-commuters in the study. This reveals a highly socially-fractured practice with various privileges that enable and constraints that limit run-commuting possibilities. Run-commuting is racialised, gendered and classed with it being most popular with urban-dwelling middle-aged white men in highly paid professional jobs, social differentiations that punctuate much of the practice. This paper also shows the uniqueness of run-commuting as a mobile practice. Arguably more concerned with running than commuting, run-commuting is highly entwined with and affected by other practices of everyday life, notably the rhythms of work, home and exercise. Run-commuting research expands the scope of active travel and demonstrates the value of conversations between transport, mobility and sport studies in understanding such modes. It is also a practice that challenges many understandings held about transport, such as notions around motivation, speed, time, productivity and effort. Run-commuting is a productively provocative practice that opens up opportunities to think and do transport otherwise. This paper shows its worth to transport studies' agendas.     

Built environment,peak hours and route choice efficiency: An investigation of commuting efficiency using GPS data

Commuting efficiency measures the impact of commuting on urban spatial and social environments. Urban policies aim to reduce commuting distances and improve commuting efficiency by supporting mixed land-use and job-housing balance. Many studies have addressed these issues by examining excess commuting at the aggregate level, and most aggregated measurements of excess commuting are based on home-to-work commuting flows between zones. However, residents' travel behaviour does not consist solely of rational attempts at minimizing commuting distances but is instead affected by commuting hours, the complexity of the commuting chain and the built environment. Thus, commuting efficiency must be studied at the individual or disaggregated levels. This paper examined individual commuting efficiency in suburban Beijing using a GPS-facilitated activity-travel survey and investigated the differences in commuting distance and route choice efficiency between morning and evening peaks. Notably, in so doing, we considered non-work stops, and also explored the impact of urban spatial factors – in both residential and working areas – on commuting efficiency using multilevel mixed effects generalized linear models. The findings suggest that there are significant differences in commuting distance and commuting efficiency between morning and evening peaks based on the nature of commutes. Residents working in city centres or with jobs near railway stations, with higher road network densities or with lower facility densities seem to be more adept at selecting optimal routes.     

Changing student mobility behaviour under financial crisis: Lessons from a case study in the Oporto University

This paper explores how the commuting patterns of university students have changed in the face of the financial crisis that has affected Portugal in 2008. In this research, we focus on the mobility behaviour of students from the Faculty of Engineering of Oporto University (FEUP). Based on two similar surveys carried out in 2006 and 2012, i.e. before and during times of financial crisis, and macrosocial data from the Portuguese Census and from the metropolitan public transport system, we provide detailed accounts of commuting patterns, including main motivations, barriers, and discuss the influence of considering different scales of analysis of the built-environment. The results show a general trend to reduce the students' costs of commuting by living with their families and using more often public transports. Our results also suggest an increasing level of inequality towards mobility, reinforced by austerity policies, which may lead to undesirable travel behaviours in the future. Although the overall evolution of students' travel behaviour points towards greater sustainability, the identified changes also suggest social-spatial injustices.     

北京市利用国铁资源发展都市圈市郊铁路构想研究

目前北京市交通拥堵日益严峻,对于国铁资源的利用方面,北京已经开行了3条市郊铁路,然而北京的国铁系统仍然没有为大规模的都市圈通勤需求提供应有的服务,存在空间和时间格局上的失配问题。通过北京与东京都市圈的城市交通特征和交通成本的比较分析,在借鉴东京国铁“五方面作战”的经验基础上,从顶层设计、“1+7”线路改造战略布局和运营管理等方面,提出北京市利用国铁资源发展都市圈市郊铁路构想,为北京市利用国铁资源发展都市圈市郊铁路提供参考依据。     

School commuting: the relationship between energy consumption and urban form

A large amount of research in the past has focused on the relationships between the energy consumption for home-to-work travel and land-use patterns. However, little is known about children’s mobility. This paper analyses the energy consumption, travel distances and mode choices for school commuting based on two decennial surveys in Belgium. The results highlight the following: (1) mobility behaviours have evolved drastically over the past decades for school commuting, an evolution that cannot be entirely related to land-use variables, (2) the energy consumption for school commuting is strongly dependent upon the school level, and (3) the links between land-use patterns and energy consumption for school commuting are different than those highlighted within the literature between urban forms and home-to-work commutes. The concentration of secondary schools and tertiary institutions in urban centres induces higher energy consumption rates, whereas the decentralisation of nursery and primary schools across the entire territory leads to very low local energy consumption and increased walking and cycling. These results provide a better understanding of school commuting within the European context and could guide future policies focused on transport energy consumption at the local scale.     

Determinants of extreme commuting. Evidence from Brussels,Geneva and Lyon

Daily travel time has increased in Europe during the last decade. Some commuters show unusual commuting behaviours, so-called extreme commuting, which is defined as spending more than 100 min commuting a day. This paper aims to explain these commuting patterns from the point of view of the extreme commuters themselves. Based on a qualitative survey conducted in three European regions - Lyon, Brussels and Geneva - among individuals that spend at least two hours a day commuting, this study shows that extreme commuting is determined by complex interplay between the individual's working and private life and issues related to travel. Among our sample, the choice of public transportation modes assisted long-duration commuting. Our results also highlight the paradox that rapid transportation networks are used intensively to allow people to remain rooted — both residentially and socially.     

Subjective assessments of personal mobility: What makes the difference between a little and a lot?

Using survey data collected from 1358 commuting workers in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1998, this paper empirically explores the determinants of individuals’ subjective assessments of their mobility (measured on a five-point ordinal scale, for 10 different categories of travel). Linear regression was used to identify the relative importance of reported mobility in explaining the variance of the dependent variables. A variety of personal factors were also found to significantly influence such assessments: personality traits, travel-related attitudes, lifestyle characteristics, and affinity for travel. The study provides insight into the way individuals mentally process the amount of travel they do, which will increase our understanding of travel behavior and its motivations.     

Co-passengering and the gendering of a mobile ferry space

This paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork with residents of ferry-reliant Bell Island, located in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It develops the concept of co-passengering to explore the strong mutual assistance relationships among long-term work commuters in this context who daily travel on multi-modal trips involving a five-kilometre ferry ride as well as travel by road at either end of the ferry. This paper highlights how mobile commuting spaces such as ferries can become gendered in specific ways as a result of formal design features and routinized practices that develop among passengers, including intense sociality over the long-term that involves regular ‘seating partners’ and activities such as card playing and ongoing conversations. In this context, co-passengering relationships mark a key element of commuting to work for Bell Islanders that has remained similar since the late 1960s.     

Day-to-day variation in excess commuting: An exploratory study of Brisbane,Australia

Commuting patterns where most if not all 'trips are optimised relative to a given distribution of jobs and housing can result in personal and socio-economic benefits. Excess commuting indicators provide useful information for academics and policy analysts to evaluate how the actual commuting pattern deviates from an optimal pattern where commuting costs are minimised. While actual commuting patterns vary from day-to-day, academic researchers have yet to quantify the temporal variation in these indicators over short time periods. This may be due to the lack of available longitudinal data as input for excess commuting indicators. This study shows that new, open and/or big data (NOBD) (e.g. smartcard data) can be exploited to serve as the input for such analysis. In this regard, our study uses half a year's worth of smartcard data from Brisbane, Australia to first derive/aggregate origins and destinations by small areas of the probable commuting trips by transit on all 122 weekdays over the study period. The study quantifies the day-to-day variation in excess commuting indicators for these trips and finds that excess commuting indicators vary considerably from one day to the next. Nevertheless, daily variations occur within a relatively consistent range which can be planned for. Our research suggests that more conscious and systematic utilisation of NOBD could change how commuting flows in cities are quantified, monitored and planned. In addition, with NOBD, we can more efficiently detect daily outliers in commuting patterns.     

Time-space convergence and urban decentralisation

The phenomenon of time-space convergence (or compression) has been considered to be associated with the technological advances that have shortened our travel time. Advances in transport technology have gradually diminished travel times, and this process has been discussed in the context of international- or national-level transport changes. This paper investigates the changing relationship between space and time at the urban level. The changing relationship between commuting time and distance in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) is empirically analysed by using the 1990, 1995, 2000 and 2005 two-percent sample data of the Korean Census of Population and Housing. The study results empirically demonstrate the close relationship between the urban decentralisation process and the time-space convergence phenomenon. The key findings of this research are that commuting time per distance unit in the SMA shortened over the 15 years of the study period, and this improvement was greater for longer journeys than for shorter trips. The empirical evidence of this research shows that workers have migrated to faster commuting modes such as car and subway and away from slower modes such as buses, so that commuting time has decreased or remained constant even as commuting distance in the SMA has increased.     

On user perception of private transport in Barcelona Metropolitan area: an experience in an academic suburban space

The negative externalities of the massive use of private transport have been widely studied and verified by the scientific community. However, the use of the automobile is still widely accepted and even vindicated among a high number of citizens. Solving this social dilemma requires analysing the reasons behind private transport use along with the perceptions of its users. This paper examines the individual motivations for using private transport to reach the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB); a single suburban node inside Barcelona’s Metropolitan Region. We used data gathered by the Mobility Survey of the UAB to measure the use of private transport and to select a group with homogeneous characteristics for which we could perform qualitative analysis based on in-depth interviews. The analysis was focused on university staff (teaching, researchers and administrative) the university group which is using the private transport the most. Qualitative methodology identified three main stages of travel by private car upon which interviewees projected their perceptions. A strong link between car commuting and social status was revealed but unlike other studies, on this case users were compelled to use private transport because of their social standing, and not as a way to progress. Finally, time travel and convenience were also found significant but always in relation with social position.     

Improving rural accessibility by locating multimodal mobility hubs

In rural regions, public transportation is often characterized by low accessibility as well as long waiting and travel times. In order to improve rural transportation systems, public decision-makers intend to implement alternative on-demand mobility modes. Herein, new intermodal travel itineraries with transfers at multimodal mobility hubs may enable faster public connections and thereby strengthen public transportation. Against this background, we present a decision support tool for locating multimodal mobility hubs to improve intermodal accessibility. As objectives, we aim at maximizing accessibility to workplaces and to places of private need. Our model decides on locations of multimodal mobility hubs and on the available on-demand mobility modes offered in addition to existing public transportation. We develop our model in an agile process together with rural decision-makers in the district of Heinsberg, Germany, and apply it in a real-world case study. As input for our model, we account for the existing public transportation system, identify points-of-interest, and estimate commuting volumes to workplaces based on official commuting data. Results promise a high potential to improve accessibility in rural areas. However, most of the improvement stems from unimodal car sharing trips.     

Long-distance trips in a sparsely populated region: The impact of high-speed infrastructures

This paper aims to analyze the different territorial performance of two new high-speed transport infrastructures, a national motorway and a high-speed rail (HSR) line, with an emphasis on their different roles on long-distance trip making, in a peripheral and sparsely populated province of Spain, contributing to the existing limited research on the influence of high-speed transport infrastructures on urban structure and mobility of sparsely populated regions.The paper provides empirical evidence by means of a mobility survey. The analysis of modal split, travel frequencies, and travel purposes allows a better understanding of long-distance mobility patterns and establishes different travel profiles. The study of commuting and discretionary flows shows different levels and types of metropolitan integration depending on the type of connection and on local characteristics.     

Do people consider an acceptable travel time? Evidence from Berkeley,CA

This paper explores the extent to which people identify an acceptable travel time for each trip they want to make and investigates the primary characteristics of this behavioural threshold. We assume that an acceptable travel time is defined through utilitarian processes that are related to cognitive and affective evaluations of travel that develop throughout a person’s lifetime. We apply a mixed methods approach to explore our hypothesis, based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with a stratified, according to commuting mode, random sample of 20 individuals living in Berkeley, CA. Our results support the validity of the acceptable travel time concept and offer (a) initial evidence on its variation to the travel mode and sociodemographic characteristics and (b) insights into people’s perceptions, attitudes, feelings and experiences about their travel. Thus, our results can contribute to a better understanding of individuals’ travel decisions and valuation of travel time and can inform time–space and accessibility research.     

Unveiling large-scale commuting patterns based on mobile phone cellular network data

In this study, with Estonia as an example,we established an approach based on Hidden Markov Model to extract large-scale commuting patterns at different geographical levels using a massive amount of mobile phone cellular network data, which is referred to as Call detail record (CDR). The proposed model is designed for reconstructing and transforming the trajectories extracted from the CDR data. This step allowed us to perform origin-destination matrix extraction among different geographical levels, which helped in depicting the commuting patterns. Besides, we introduced different techniques for analyzing the commuting at the urban level. Our results unveiled that there is great potential behind mobile data of the cellular networks after transforming it into meaningful mobility patterns. That can easily be used for understanding urban dynamics, large-scale daily commuting and mobility. The aggressive development and growth of ubiquitous mobile sensing have generated valuable data that can be used with our approach for providing answers and solutions to the growing problems of transportation, urbanization and sustainability.