Is commuting a daily behavior? Rhythmic evidence as of France, 2019

Abstract

Home to Work (H2W) commuting travel, together with urbanization and transport networks, have experienced much development since the end of the 19th century in both workers’ lives and transport networks’ traffic. The attraction of metropolises and the ease of transport have even triggered long distance commuting, sometimes in conjunction with overnighting practices that stretch the commuting tours (or cycles) beyond the day level. Based on the French nationwide household travel survey of 2019, this article gives a comprehensive description of commuting practices across origin-destination distance and along time as lived by individual workers at the month level. Commuting rhythms are characterized in terms of commuting cycle length in days and monthly frequency. Four typical patterns are exhibited, namely bi-daily, full daily, mono-daily and overnighting. Their respective shares are measured in the statistical populations (i) of workers, (ii) of days of life or just at work, (iii) of distances travelled on modal networks. Discrete-choice models of H2W rhythm choice are designed and estimated: the results show the influence of travel impedance in time and distance at the level of one-way trips for short range H2W and at the level of monthly budgets for long range H2W. Lastly, the shares of commuting trips in modal traffic on road and rail networks are measured, evidencing a significant contribution of long distance commuting to the GHG emissions of transport.