The impact of urban characteristics and residents’ income on commuting in China

This study examined the relationship between urban characteristics and residents’ commuting behaviour using sample survey data from 106 cities in China. We found that the average commuting time of high-income groups is significantly longer than that of low-income groups. The increasing urbanization rate leads to an increase in commuting time and more residents using public transport for commuting. The increase in the urban population density is expected to increase the commuting time and the possibility of commuting using non-motorised modes. Different urban characteristics have different effects on the commuting patterns of residents within different income groups. The increased urbanization rate promotes the use of motorised modes for commuting in the high-income group, and shortens the commuting time of the low-income group. We also found that population density and neighbourhood-level factors have a greater impact on the commuting time of the low-income group compared to the high-income group. We suggest China’s urban planners should place emphasis on the commuting requirements of the low-income group by China’s urban planners.     

Urban form,commuting patterns and CO2 emissions: What differences between the municipality’s residents and its jobs?

This article investigates the links between urban form and commuting patterns, and the CO₂ emissions associated with them, in the municipalities that comprise the New Town of Marne-la-Vallée (NTMV) located in the Paris Region. The paper distinguishes between the commutes performed by residents and those generated by the jobs located in a municipality. The contribution of the paper is twofold. Firstly, it shows that the CO₂ emissions of commutes differ greatly depending on whether one considers residents or jobs: hence focusing on the travel behaviour of residents can lead to significant errors in the assessment of the CO₂ emissions generated by a municipality, and therefore its environmental sustainability. Secondly, the paper explores the relationship between commuting trips and several indicators of urban form: density, compactness, jobs-to-residents ratio, accessibility to public transport and distance from Paris. We highlight that high jobs-to-residents ratios tend to increase the proportion of jobs held by residents. Density and compactness are associated with more sustainable travel behaviour among residents, but not non-residents. Finally, the shape of the public transport system, which mainly connects the municipalities of the NTMV with Paris, tends to decrease the proportion of jobs held by residents, especially in the municipalities that are close to Paris, and does not allow non-residents, most of whom do not travel from Paris, to use public transport.     

Active or passive? Sustainable manufacturing in the direct-channel green supply chain: A perspective of two types of green product designs

This paper considers a supply chain in which a manufacturer produces and sells two types of green products in its direct channel under government interventions aiming to improve social welfare. There is a Stackelberg game between the two stakeholders. Our research derives the closed form solutions to the optimal tax, green degree and price for the products, and obtains the strategies for government and manufacturer under different environmental policies. By considering six scenarios, our models obtain the best choice from the comparison between the two cases in which the manufacturer determines its product green degree actively or accepts the green standard set by the government passively. Then, we conduct some sensitivity analyses and explore the scenario in which there is competition between green products and non-green products. The results of this research indicate that the government setting the product green standard and providing the manufacturer with a subsidy is significant.     

Volatility of car ownership, commuting mode and time in the UK

This paper has two objectives: to examine the volatility of travel behaviour over time and consider the factors explaining this volatility; and to estimate the factors determining car ownership and commuting by car. The analysis is based on observations of individuals and households over a period of up to 11 years obtained from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS). Changes in car ownership, commuting mode and commuting time over a period of years for the same individuals/households are examined to determine the extent to which these change from year-to-year. This volatility of individual behaviour is a measure of the ease of change or adaptation. If behaviour changes easily, policy measures are likely to have a stronger and more rapid effect than if there is more resistance to change. The changes are “explained” in terms of factors such as moving house, changing job and employment status. The factors determining car ownership and commuting by car are analysed using a dynamic panel-data models.     

Commute duration and health: Empirical evidence from Brazil

There have been many empirical studies associating commuting time and health outcomes in the last few decades. Their general conclusion is that commuting and health are negatively related. The validity of their findings, however, is questionable, given their lack of good identification strategies to correctly account for omitted variables. In this paper, we analyze this relationship using a large and unique nationally representative sample of Brazilian individuals, coupled with the use of propensity score matching techniques, and the application of an exhaustive set of standard falsification tests and sensitivity analysis that may prevent one from claiming a causal link between the two variables. Our results indicate that individuals with more than one hour of commuting appear to have statistically higher probability, ranging from 1.9 to 4.6 percentage points, of reporting bad health status when compared to a person whose commuting time is less than one hour.     

Does working from home reduce CO2 emissions? An analysis of travel patterns as dictated by workplaces

This research provides new evidence about the relationship between travel behavior, workplace diversification, and environmental impact in the United Kingdom using data from the National Travel Survey for the period between 2002 and 2017. The path analysis approach based on SEM handles both direct and indirect effects and allows for a comprehensive study of travel behavior, trade-off effects, and work and non-work trips. The results suggest that workplace diversification is often reflected by longer average distances for work trips, which are often associated with more remote residential locations. Findings also show that for some categories, such as teleworkers and home-based workers, trade-off effects are observed between work and non-work trips, which increase CO2 emission levels.     

Gender differentials in travel pattern – The case of a mid-sized city,Rajkot, India

This paper is at the conjunction of arguments for gender equity in transport services on one hand and need to move towards low carbon transport on the other in a developing country city. The case study city, Rajkot, a mid-sized Indian city with mixed land use and limited public transport at the time of this study, has short trip lengths and low trip rates. But, even in this city there is gender disparity in travel pattern. Thus, trip rates and trip lengths of women in the city in each of the income group are lower than that of their male counter parts. With the increase in income, both, the trip rates and lengths increase, but, the increase is higher for men than for women. While the large proportions of women in each income group walk, that among the lowest income group walking is the predominant mode, as they are ‘no-choice’ or ‘forced’ walkers. With the increase in household income, women tend to shift to para-transit and men to personal motorized transport. If sustainability arguments or climate policies are to target retaining the current low ecological footprint of the women as one of the strategies, it needs to cater to expansion of their mobility while improving infrastructure to support the same.     

Immigration, residential location, car ownership, and commuting behavior: a multivariate latent class analysis from California

Using latent class cluster analysis, this paper investigates the spatial, social, demographic, and economic determinants of immigrants’ joint distribution among travel time, mode choice, and departure time for work using the 2000 Census long form data. Through a latent tree structure analysis, age, residential location, immigration stage, gender, personal income, and race are found to be the primary determinants in the workplace commute decision-making process. By defining several relatively homogeneous population segments, the likelihood of falling into each segment is found to differ across age groups and geography, with different indicators affecting each group differentially. This analysis complements past studies that used regression models to investigate socio-demographic indicators and their impact on travel behavior in two distinct ways: (a) analysis is done by considering travel time, mode choice, and departure time for work simultaneously, and (b) heterogeneity in behavior is accounted for using methods that identify different groups of behavior and then their determinants. Conclusively the method here is richer than many other methods used to study the ethnically diverse population of California and shows the addition of geographic location and latent segment identification to greatly improve our understanding of specific behaviors. It also provides evidence that immigrants are as diverse as the non-immigrant population and transportation policies need to be defined accordingly.

Transport deregulation and cross‐border trucking in North America

Internationally, recent years have seen a spread of deregulatory policies with respect to transport. Equally, transport movements across national boundaries have expanded as trade has grown. Despite these two quite noticeable trends comparatively little has been written on the problems that are created for cross‐border traffic as the result of differential changes in national regulatory policies. This paper is concerned with looking specifically at what has happened in the context of road freight transport movements across the U.S.‐Canadian border and the wider (especially for the formulation of a Common Transport Policy for the EEC) lessons which can be learned from it.     

Area- and gender-based commuting differentials in India’s largest urban-rural region

In the countries of the Global South such as India, rapid urbanization and the increase in individual motorization may lead to a predominance of unsustainable commuting patterns. However, urbanization also has important positive effects, including the empowerment of women. This paper examines newly released, spatially disaggregated data on home-to-work commuting by non-agricultural workers in the National Capital Region of India. It aims to understand and compare commuting patterns in urban and rural areas, including choice of travel modes, commuting distances, and gender differentials.The results reveal a tendency observable in urban residents to use individual motorized transport more often both for short and for long trips, although the proportion of individual motorization is far from what it is in the industrial world. Rural areas are characterized by the predominance of non-motorized travel modes and a large share of long trips. The mobility gap between men and women does not appear to increase with literacy. In urban areas, women often choose to commute by car rather than using green modes of transportation (especially in higher-income districts). The paper stresses the importance of the area and gender differentials that need to be taken into account when formulating regional transport policies.     

Should subsidies to urban passenger transport be increased? A spatial CGE analysis for a German metropolitan area

In many countries passenger transport is significantly subsidized in a variety of ways for various reasons. The objective of this paper is to examine efficiency, distributional, environmental (CO₂ emissions) and spatial effects of increasing different kinds of passenger transport subsidies discriminating between household types, travel purposes and travel modes. The effects are calculated by applying a numerical spatial general equilibrium approach calibrated to an average German metropolitan area. In extension to most studies focusing on only one kind of subsidy, we compare the effects of different transport subsidies within the same unified framework that allows to account for two features not yet considered simultaneously in studies on transport subsidies: endogenous labor supply and location decisions. Furthermore, congestion, travel mode choice, travel related CO₂ emissions and institutional details regarding the tax system in Germany are taken into account. The results suggest that optimal subsidy levels are either small or even zero. While subsidizing public transport is welfare enhancing, subsidies to urban road traffic reduce aggregate urban welfare. Concerning the latter it is shown that making investments in urban road infrastructure capacity or reducing gasoline taxes may even be harmful to residents using predominantly automobile. In contrast, pure commuting subsidies hardly affect aggregate urban welfare, but distributional effects are substantial. All policies cause suburbanization of city residents and (except for subsidizing public transport) contribute to urban sprawl by raising the spatial imbalance of residences and jobs but the effect is relatively small. In addition, the policies induce a very differentiated pattern regarding distributional effects, benefits of landowners and environmental effects.     

Cycle commuting in Belgium: Spatial determinants and ‘re-cycling’ strategies

This paper attempts to explain the spatial variation of the use of a bicycle for commuting to work at the level of the 589 municipalities in Belgium. Regression techniques were used and special attention was paid to autocorrelation, heterogeneity and multicollinearity. Spatial lag models were used to correct for the presence of spatial dependence and a disaggregated modelling strategy was adopted for the northern and southern parts of the country. The results show that much of the inter-municipality variation in bicycle use is related to environmental aspects such as the relief, traffic volumes and cycling accidents. Town size, distance travelled and demographic aspects also have some effect. In addition, there are regional differences in the effects of the structural covariates on bicycle use: the impact of variables such as traffic volume and cycling accidents differs substantially between the north and the south of the country. This paper also suggests that high rates of bicycle use in one municipality stimulate cycling in neighbouring municipalities, and hence that a mass effect can be initiated, i.e. more cycle commuting encourages even more commuters in the area to cycle. These findings provide some recommendations for decision-makers wishing to promote a shift from car to bicycle use.     

The influence of built environment to the trends in commuting journeys in the Netherlands

In this paper we describe commuting trends in the Netherlands in the past decade and examine the influence of urban form and travel accessibility on commuting journeys over time on the basis of data from the Dutch National Travel Survey. Exploratory analysis is performed to identify changes in commuting participation, departure time, commuting time, commuting distance and the modal split. Regression analysis and choice models are used to examine the influence of the built environment on commuting parameters over time. The results indicate that urban form has consistently influenced the parameters of commuting journey in the Netherlands in the last 10 years. However, the trend of the influence is unique for each commuting model. Some influences have become less significant in the last decade and some have become stronger.

Jobs-housing imbalance, spatial correlation, and excess commuting

In this paper, we use continuous urban structure instead of zonal model, try to calculate unbiased excess commuting with joint distribution of homes and workplaces developed by Vaughan (1974), and describe the relationship between urban structure and commuting distance explicitly and theoretically for generalized home-workplace assignment pattern. We simplify the quadrivariate distribution model to a model with three important parameters: the spread of homes, the spread of workplaces, and the spatial correlation of homes and workplaces. Then we show that excess commuting and capacity utilization are expressed by the imbalance and the spatial correlation of jobs-housing structure in a theoretical context, moreover it explicitly evaluates targeting US and Japanese/Korean cities.     

Commuters’ acceptance of and behavior reactions to license plate restriction policy: A case study of Tianjin,China

License plate restriction (LPR) policies are currently being implemented in major Chinese cities with the aim of mitigating traffic congestions. Meanwhile, much controversy regarding the effectiveness of the LPR policies is arising. To better understand the impact of the LPR policies, this paper studies commuters’ acceptance of and behavior reactions to the policies after their implementation. A theoretical model was proposed as the first step, followed by a questionnaire survey that was conducted in Tianjin, China, where an LPR policy has been in place since March 2014. Car owners frequently commuting within the restricted area were sampled as respondents, and a multi-variable regression method was employed to analyze the collected survey data. The results indicate that it is necessary to promote public’s acceptance of the LPR policy, because lower acceptance will lead to more negative reactions towards the policy, which may weaken its effectiveness. Main factors affecting the level of acceptance of the policy are also found, which may serve as a reference for transportation authorities seeking to increase commuters’ acceptance of the policy. These findings are beneficial to designing and implementing LPR policies.