Impact of the jobs-housing balance on urban commuting in Beijing in the transformation era

This empirical study examines the impact of the jobs-housing balance on individual commuting time in Beijing in the period of transformation of the Chinese economy and society. The results of the analysis show that the jobs-housing balance has a statistically significant association with a worker’s commuting time when the factors of transport accessibility, population density and worker’s socioeconomic characteristics are controlled. The higher the jobs-housing balance, the shorter the worker’s commuting time. The finding suggests that the jobs-housing balance still has significant implications for commuting time, although the recent market-oriented reforms in housing are changing the jobs-housing balance in the danwei system that prevailed in the socialist era. As the housing markets are imperfect, with strong government intervention in Beijing, the finding implies that the co-location hypothesis - which believes development management would create ‘barriers’ to a jobs-housing balance and increase commuting time - needs to be rethought before it can be generalized and applied to China’s cities. The results of the analysis also show that the workers living in danwei housing still have shorter commuting time. The finding indicates that the housing marketization is likely to induce a local jobs-housing imbalance and thereby increase commuting time. In this sense, a deterioration in the jobs-housing imbalance and increased commuting time in Beijing may owe much to the adoption of market-based housing supply.     

Comparison of efficiency between public and private transport modes using excess commuting: An experience in Dar es Salaam

The excess commuting concept is well-known in developed countries. Since the introduction of the concept in the developed countries, the excess commuting framework has been used to derive a set of benchmarks and indices for the analyses of spatial mismatch, jobs-housing balance, and commuting efficiency in urban regions. However, there are very few studies which have examined excess commuting parameters in relation to mode of transport in the current excess commuting literature. Additionally, very few studies on excess commuting have been undertaken in developing countries with no evidence on any study in African cities. This paper attempts to add to the excess commuting literature by examining and comparing excess commuting parameters between public and private transport modes in Dar es Salaam city. The study investigated the effects of land use patterns in the year 2007 (the base year) and the projected land uses in the year 2030 on excess commuting parameters. The results suggest that public transport in Dar es Salaam is very good in terms of providing excellent options to get everywhere in the city as it connects homes and jobs as well as private transport. This is very different from cities in the more developed world, especially in the USA, where public transport is less effective at connecting origins and destinations. It was also found that the land use scenario in the year 2030 encourages a travel pattern that increases the actual average travel distance.     

Excess commuting: a critical review and comparative analysis of concepts,indices, and policy implications

The last three decades have witnessed substantial growth in the literature on excess commuting. Researchers have proposed and applied a number of commuting benchmarks and excess commuting indices that aim to evaluate the commuting efficiency and jobs-housing balance of cities. A comprehensive review and comparative evaluation of the proposed metrics in terms of their ability to capture the intended phenomena, while controlling for the other general characteristics of cities, has yet to be performed. This article attempts to fill this gap by examining four commuting benchmarks (minimum commute, maximum commute, random commute, and proportionally matched commute) and five excess commuting indices (excess commute, commuting potential utilized, commuting economy, normalized commuting economy, and effort). Our conceptual analysis of the indices is complemented with a comparative empirical analysis of commuting in thirty Canadian cities. We explore relationships between the indices and point out the strengths and limitations of each. The findings suggest that no single index can adequately capture the commuting performance of an urban area, while each index can be employed to address a specific policy question. Used together, the indices can provide a reasonably good understanding of urban form and commuting behavior.     

Exploring both home-based and work-based jobs-housing balance by distance decay effect

The relationship between built environment and jobs-housing balance has been discussed at either residence or workplace in literature. Less attention has been paid to both perspectives simultaneously. Built environment may have different relationships with home-based and work-based jobs-housing balance from a single perspective. However, the difference and to what extent is still not clear. It is significant in providing area-based urban planning suggestions. This study applied one-month cellular cellphone data in Guangzhou, China. It proposed a new jobs-housing balance measurement by estimating decay parameters of commuting distance distributions. Home-based and work-based jobs-housing balance was differentiated by aggregating commuting trips into departure and arrival locations. A linear regression model was applied to examine the correlation effect of built environment factors on home-based and work-based jobs-housing balance respectively, and a classification and regression trees (CART) model was applied to explore the combined effect of built environment on jobs-housing balance patterns. Results have shown that built environment has different correlations with home-based and work-based jobs-housing balance. For example, the POI mixture improves work-based jobs-housing balance but worsens home-based jobs-housing balance. Another important finding is that a moderate jobs-housing ratio does not ensure jobs-housing balance. In contrast, jobs-housing is imbalanced at well-developed communities.     

The jobs-housing relationship and commuting in Guangzhou,China: Hukou and dual structure

Jobs-housing relations and commuting have been a concern of academics and policy makers alike. Various hypotheses from the West have been tested in leading Chinese metropolises, but so far no attention has been paid to the role of hukou, a rather unique Chinese institution causing the emergence of invisible walls within cities. To address this deficiency, the present paper places hukou at the forefront in its analysis of commuting in Guangzhou and reveals that in comparison with hukou holders, non-hukou residents tend to have more balanced jobs-housing relationship, rely less on motorized transport, and spend less time on commuting than hukou holders. Furthermore, some variables have influence on commuting time for one hukou type but not the other; some other variables that have influence on both groups differ systematically in their effects.     

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.     

Exploring job accessibility in the transformation context: an institutionalist approach and its application in Beijing

There is a strong need to explore the determinants of worker’s commuting time as the declines in job accessibility associated with the dramatic growth of commuting time have become a serious negative effect on the quality of urban life in megacities of China. Most well-developed theories exploring change in commuting time are based on neo-classical economic theory. This paper argues however that in the case of China institutional factors of the housing provision system and labour mobility management have been more important. The paper conceptualizes an institutionalist approach incorporating housing and controls over labour mobility and applies it to analyse these influences on workers’ commuting time in Beijing. The analysis shows that the interaction of housing provision, the market system and the Hukou system together have significant impact upon individual commuting time allowing for worker’s annual household income, occupation and transport mode. The findings suggest that the market-oriented housing reforms have changed the local jobs–housing balance that prevailed in pre-reform era and have thus induced growth of commuting time; the remaining the unfair treatment of residents according to their Hukou status may influence the floating worker’s ability to connect housing and workplace opportunities that could reduce commuting time. With respect to future studies, the institutionalist approach seems to be an efficient means of exploring particular factors that emerge in the transformation of an economy.     

The jobs–housing relationship and commuting in Beijing,China: the legacy of Danwei

China’s market-oriented reform has not only revitalized the economy but also changed the physical structure of Chinese cities, which used to be largely determined by the socialist Danwei (or work unit) system. In order to understand the impacts of the reform and the influence of Danwei on jobs–housing relationships and commuting behavior, this study investigates whether there are differences in commuting behavior between individuals who live in houses provided by Danwei and those who reside in houses from private market sources in urban China. We apply the structural equations model to investigate the interactions between housing source (from Danwei or not), jobs–housing relationship, transport mode and commuting time in Beijing, the capital city of China. The results show that Danwei housing commuters have shorter commuting trips and higher usage of non-motorized transport mode than those who live in houses from the market sources. This finding implies that the diminishing influence of the traditional Danwei system and the market-oriented reform in urban development may have changed the jobs–housing balance and increased travel demand in Chinese cities.     

Decomposing excess commuting: a Monte Carlo simulation approach

Excess or wasteful commuting is measured as the proportion of actual commute that is over minimum (optimal) commute when assuming that people could freely swap their homes and jobs in a city. Studies usually rely on survey data to define actual commute, and measure the optimal commute at an aggregate zonal level by Linear Programming (LP). Travel time from a survey could include reporting errors and respondents might not be representative of the areas they reside; and the derived optimal commute at an aggregate areal level is also subject to the zonal effect. Both may bias the estimate of excess commuting. Based on the 2006–2010 Census for Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) data in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, this research uses a Monte Carlo approach to simulate individual resident workers and individual jobs within census tracts, estimate commute distance and time from journey-to-work trips, and define the optimal commute based on simulated individual locations. Findings indicate that both reporting errors and the use of aggregate zonal data contribute to miscalculation of excess commuting.     

Urban structure,commuting burden,and employment status of labour forces in an Australian city

Understanding the productivity effects of worker commuting burdens is essential for appraisals of urban planning and investment strategies designed to improve urban productivity. However, the extant urban planning literature lacks systematic analysis of the influence of commuting costs on labour mobility, employment engagement, and productivity. This paper provides the first ever detailed analysis of mobility and commuting burdens for workers in a range of industries and occupational groups in Melbourne, Australia. Linking commuting burdens and measures of employment status in urban areas, this paper finds that the labour force in areas experiencing high commuting burdens exhibit lower levels of engagement with job markets. This research further reveals important variations in such relationships across diverse industry and occupation groups. The results provide urban policy makers with better information about urban transport and employment patterns, thus enabling them to investigate alternative approaches to investing in housing and transport infrastructure to reduce worker commuting burdens and improve economic performance.     

The political economy of post-transition transportation policy in Hungary

This paper reviews transportation system trends in Hungary since the transition in 1989. It documents the continuation of rapid increases in private motor vehicle ownership and use despite a major economic downturn. Sharp increases in new highway investments are contrasted with a growing backlog of unmet maintenance and rehabilitation needs in the road, rail and public transit sectors. It then reviews recent political struggles over these policies, and the effectiveness of these policies in promoting employment, regional development, and a sustainable environment. It suggests that the dynamics of the post-industrial economy may have reduced the importance of highway sector investments relative to investments into human capital.     

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.     

Commute minimization in the Greater Toronto Area: applying a modified excess commute

Following the excess commuting literature, we develop a benchmark measure of the minimum required commute, conditional on the layout of the specific urban area. Through segmentation of the commuters into those that can be relocated and those that cannot, we try to explain the difference between the minimum required and actual commute. To determine the segmentation of the commuters we make use of a micro-level explanatory model of commuting distance. This micro-level modeling exercise informs a number of excess commuting simulations that address the contribution of certain groups of commuters to total commuting. Findings from the micro-analysis reaffirm similar findings in the literature for other urban areas. The simulation exercise suggests that varied levels of commute savings may result from policy directed at particular commuter groups.     

Mode choice in commuting and the built environment in México City. Is there a chance for non-motorized travel?

Non-motorized transportation (NMT) has emerged as a mitigating alternative for the negative externalities of motorized travel. This research presents an overview of the intra-metropolitan geography of transportation mode choice in the journey to work in the México City Metropolitan Area (MCMA), which can be seen as a representation of the huge socioeconomic inequalities typical of the Global South. The regression model applied showed that, as expected, socioeconomic variables were strong determinants of mode choice. An increase in age, as well as lower categories of socioeconomic class and educational attainment, were associated with the use of transit and non-motorized travel. Other factors positively associated with bike use were distance to the center, density of mass-transit systems stations, street intersection density, and the flat surface. The pattern of walk commuting with respect to the city center followed a u-shaped curve, while factors significantly positively associated were female, population density, the jobs-housing ratio at the origin, and the density of mass-transit systems stations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the research implications to leverage public policy efforts to promote NMT.     

Active commuting in a university setting: Assessing commuting habits and potential for modal change

This paper describes the results of an online survey that examined commuting patterns, potential for change and barriers and motivators affecting transport decisions in a University population (n=1040 students, n=1170 staff). Overall, 21.5% of staff and 46.8% of students at The University of Western Australia regularly used active modes, and potentially an additional 30% of staff and students would switch to active modes. The results suggested that reducing barriers to using active modes, in particular reducing actual and perceived travel time by bus and bicycle would have the greatest impact on commuting patterns. Some policy applications appeared to hold particular promise, including an implementation of a subsidised public transport pass (U-Pass), increased student housing on or near campus, increased cost of parking, and improved bus services and cycle networks.     

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.     

Near “real-time” estimation of excess commuting from open-source data: Evidence from China's megacities

Urban commuting has continuously fascinated scholars and decision-makers. As few people live and work in the same place, there is always excess commuting (i.e., the non-optimal or surplus work travel occurring in cities because people do not minimize their journeys to work for most residents). Traditional commuting data sources (e.g., questionnaires and census surveys) are challenged by small samples, high cost, and low spatiotemporal resolution. In contrast, the big social-sensing data (e.g., smart card and mobile phone data) only consider one or two traffic mode of a route, which is not consistent with the real-life condition. This article proposes a framework for modeling excess commuting based on open-source data of the ten most populous megacities in China. We downloaded residential points of interest (POIs) from Lianjia Real Estate website and obtained workplace POIs from China's AMAP, which is widespread used as Google map. The stratified sampling approach was employed to derive commuting pairs. Both commuting distance and time were obtained by the shortest path under public transportation from AMAP. Then, the linear programming method was employed to calculate the theoretical minimum commuting time and distance of each city. We analyzed the statistical property and spatial distributions of excess commuting and found that (1) commuting distances and time (ranging from 9.1 to18.1 km and from 44.8 to 74.3  minutes) of all ten megacities follow a left-skewed normal distribution; (2) in terms of commute cost, all cities show universal core-periphery patterns where the spatial heterogeneity of the commuting time is more significant than that of distance; (3) for each city, the excess commuting measured by time (i.e. from 0.61 to 0.79) is lower than that measured by distance (i.e. 0.68 to 0.89); and (4) the role of mixing land use, waterbody distribution, and centripetal urbanization on urban commuting distance and time is significant.     

Disability,wages, and commuting in New York

In the U.S., substantial employment and wage gaps persist between workers with and without disabilities. A lack of accessible transportation is often cited as a barrier to employment in higher wage jobs for people with disabilities, but little is known about the intraurban commuting patterns of employed people with disabilities in relation to their wage earnings. Our study compares wages and commute times between workers with and without disabilities in the New York metropolitan region and identifies the intraurban zones where residents experience higher inequities in wage earnings and commute times. We obtained our data from the Public Use Microdata Sample (PUMS) of the American Community Survey (ACS) for the 2008–2012 time period. We used linear mixed-effects models and generated separate models with log hourly wage or one-way commute time as the dependent variable. We find significant differences in wages and commute times between workers with and without disabilities at the scale of the metropolitan region as well as by intraurban zone. At the metropolitan scale, disabled workers earn 16.6% less and commute one minute longer on average than non-disabled workers. High commute and wage inequalities converge in the center, where workers with disabilities are more likely to use public transit, earn 17.1% less, and travel nearly four minutes longer on average than workers without disabilities. These results suggest that transport options are less accessible and slower for disabled workers than they are for non-disabled workers. Our findings indicate a need for more accessible and quicker forms of transportation in the center along with an increased availability of centrally located and affordable housing to reduce the disability gap in wages and commute times. We also find that workers with disabilities generally seek higher wages in exchange for longer commute times, but the results differ by race/ethnicity and gender. Compared to white men, minority workers earn much less, and white and Hispanic women have significantly shorter commute times. Our findings offer new geographic insights on how having a disability can influence wage earnings and commute times for workers in different intraurban zones in the New York metropolitan region.