Would fewer people drive to work in a city without excess commuting? Explorations in the Paris metropolitan area

Abstract

Urban planners have explored many solutions for reducing the energy and environmental costs of daily mobility in cities and one of them is to encourage households to embrace more efficient commuting patterns. As research on "excess commuting" has shown, the spatial distribution of housing and jobs in many cities would theoretically allow much shorter commuting distances than are actually observed. The question this paper tackles is how a more efficient commuting pattern would affect the transport modes workers use to travel to work. If workers and jobs were rematched in such a way as to minimise average commute distance, how would such a change impact the way people travel to work? While one might easily imagine an increase in the share of trips covered by soft modes of transport, there are reasons to believe that in some cases there might also be unexpected outcomes such an increase in car use. So how would people travel to work in a city where there is no "excess commuting"? We looked for an answer to this question through empirical simulations in the case of the Paris Metropolitan Area. Highlights  An original way to explore the issue of excess commuting  A simulation-based approach to estimating the share of car use in trips-towork under the hypothesis of commute minimisation  Pioneering research on excess commuting in the case of the Paris Metropolitan Area  In the Paris Metropolis, cutting average commuting distance could result in an increase in commuting by car  Minimising commute length converts many long-range trips by public transport into mid-range trips by car

A socioeconomic analysis of commuting professionals

“…First, the integration of smaller scaled geographical data in the present framework yields great potential for improving model quality. Contributions such as Horner et al (2015), Schleith et al (2016), Sultana (2005) or Korsu and Le Néchet (2017) used such data to determine the influence of small-scale conditions on commuting behaviours and rely on quantitative spatial concepts such as excess commuting. Groot et al (2012), Hjorthol and Vågane (2014), Weber and Sultana (2008), Shearmur and Motte (2009) or Wrede (2013) stated a spatial sorting of workers by their qualification, due to the economic or social attributes of a region, city or neighbourhood.…”

Car ownership and commuting mode of the “original” residents in a high-density city center: A case study in Shanghai

“…Confronted with this problem, some scholars have attempted to establish a model to explore the possibility of a well-designed city that could minimize the use of cars. Model simulations have shown that a reduction in commuting distance paradoxically leads to more cars being driven in the city and the metro system, designed for long-distance travel, becoming obsolete (Korsu & Néchet, 2017). This result seems to be rather strange for Western countries, especially the U.S., but fits the commuting patterns in developing countries such as Tanzania (Bwire & Zengo, 2020).…”

Urban commuting dynamics in response to public transit upgrades: A big data approach

“…In the U.S. context, transit ridership has been declining rapidly despite significant improvements in public infrastructure [8]. However, cities like Paris, London, and Tokyo have highly efficient urban rail transit systems that provide effective connections between city center and outer suburbs [14]. Public transit improvements also affect commuting patterns by changing residence and jobs locations [15].…”