Commuting times increase as cities grow, and then fall as areas mature

With more than 80 percent of Americans now living in urban areas, the consequences of city growth are more important than ever. But how does the growth of cites affect the way people commute? In order to investigate how this ‘commuting transition’ works, Selima Sultana and Joe Weber examined commuting times across 50 U.S. metropolitan areas. They find that, across time, commuting times are highest in new neighborhoods or in booming housing areas. As cities grow, these areas become more mature, and commuting times fall, with new areas again experiencing longer commutes

Racial Variations in Males' Commuting Times in Atlanta: What Does the Evidence Suggest?

Using a sample from the comparatively most privileged group of black males, those married and living with a working spouse, this article investigates how race-based residential locations and the spatial structure of labor markets affect commuting experiences. This research uses the most sophisticated commuting data available at the time the research was conducted, the 1990 5 percent Public-Use Microdata Samples for the Atlanta Metropolitan Area, and again confirms severe spatial mismatch problems for central-city blacks, regardless of socioeconomic status, household formation, and access to automobiles. However, the situation with black males living in suburban areas differs significantly as those in the southern (predominantly black) suburbs show considerable evidence of spatial mismatch, whereas the northern (predominantly white) suburbs show no such evidence

Household Energy Expenditures in North Carolina: A Geographically Weighted Regression Approach

[2017-2018 UNCG University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund Grant Winner.] The U.S. household (HH) energy consumption is responsible for approximately 20% of annual global GHG emissions. Identifying the key factors influencing HH energy consumption is a major goal of policy makers to achieve energy sustainability. Although various explanatory factors have been examined, empirical evidence is inconclusive. Most studies are either aspatial in nature or neglect the spatial non-stationarity in data. Our study examines spatial variation of the key factors associated with HH energy expenditures at census tract level by utilizing geographically weighted regression (GWR) for the 14 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in North Carolina (NC). A range of explanatory variables including socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of households, local urban form, housing characteristics, and temperature are analyzed. While GWR model for HH transportation expenditures has a better performance compared to the utility model, the results indicate that the GWR model for both utility and transportation has a slightly better prediction power compared to the traditional ordinary least square (OLS) model. HH median income, median age of householders, urban compactness, and distance from the primary city center explain spatial variability of HH transportation expenditures in the study area. HH median income, median age of householders, and percent of one-unit detached housing are identified as the main influencing factors on HH utility expenditures in the GWR model. This analysis also provides the spatial variability of the relationship between HH energy expenditures and the associated factors suggesting the need for location-specific evaluation and suitable guidelines to reduce the energy consumption

Transportation Sustainability in the Urban Context: A Comprehensive Review

Although the term “sustainability” did not gain traction until the 1980s, concerns about the consequences of transportation technology started long before. This paper reviews the literature on urban transportation sustainability using three frameworks. First, urban transportation can be unsustainable environmentally, economically, and socially (the three pillars of sustainability). Second, sustainable strategies tend to fall into two paradigms. Sustainable Transport Technology improves current patterns of modes and trips by consuming less resources and generating less waste. Sustainable Travel Behavior and Built Environment takes a more holistic approach that targets more sustainable travel choices, recognizing that changes in the built environment that currently constrains those choices are also essential. Third, the Planner’s Triangle helps explain commonly encountered situations where inherent tradeoffs can impede win-win-win strategies across environmental, economic, and social domains. The paper concludes with future research directions and concluding thoughts about urban transportation and sustainability

The impacts of high-speed rail extensions on accessibility and spatial equity changes in South Korea from 2004 to 2018

The construction of South Korean High-Speed Rail (HSR) or Korea Train eXpress (KTX) has been evolving in phases since its first operation in 2004. This development raises concerns whether the benefits from the extended HSR network would again be limited to the initial HSR corridors and will deepen the inequalities in accessibility with the rising issue of uneven regional development of the country. This paper measures the accessibility of each stage of HSR network extension and evaluates its spatial distribution, variation, and changes using weighted averaged travel time and potential accessibility indicators. The results of this study find different accessibility impacts from each stage of HSR extension. Although travel-time reduction and increased attractions have been widened in more cities by each HSR extension, the spatial equity is degenerated by the extension in 2010/2011 as the improvement of accessibility has been concentrated in cities along the primary HSR corridor near the already-advantageous Seoul capital area. In contrast, the future HSR extension in 2018 will enhance equitable accessibility to the isolated regions such as the northeast and the southwest regions of the country. However, the relative degree of accessibility improvement will not be large enough for increasing the spatial equity of accessibility without more extended HSR networks between provinces

Transforming Race and Class in Suburbia: Decline in Metropolitan Baltimore, by Thomas J. Vicino

A review of the book “Transforming Race and Class in Suburbia: Decline in Metropolitan Baltimore” by Thomas J. Vicino

A Review of “Motoring: The Highway Experience in America”

A review of the book “Motoring: The Highway Experience in America” by John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle

What about Dual-Earner Households in Jobs-Housing Balance Research? An Essential Issue in Transport Geography

Within the last decade considerable concern has been expressed about increasing commuting times and their associated negative effects on traffic congestion and air pollution within metropolitan areas. The links between commuting time and low-density, dispersed urban forms have emerged as culprits, with attention often focused on how to reshape cities in ways that can help reduce these problems. The idea of creating a balance between jobs and housing within different commuting catchment areas of a city has been prominent for some time in academia, as well with policy makers, as an urban and transportation policy for reducing these problems. The concept of jobs–housing balance states that all areas of a city should have sufficient housing for employees near employment concentrations, and vice versa

Social Change and Sustainable Transport, by William R. Black and Peter Nijkamp (eds.), Indiana University Press, 2002 [Review]

The last decades of the twentieth century witnessed the transforming processes of metropolitan economic restructuring (e.g., flexible production, growth of information and telecommunication technologies) along with social changes that have been created by and, in turn, propel that restructuring. These forces have had considerable impacts on urban transportation systems. The twenty-first century will undoubtedly see a variety of new social and technological trends that will continue to influence the ways in which transport and communication systems are supplied and utilized. Although at the present time a wide range of speculation exists about future transport systems, two trends that are apparent are increasing vehicle size and fuel consumption, and the increasing ubiquity of technologies with the potential to significantly alter transport patterns. The former trends are worrisome for their implications for the ability of society to maintain increasing levels of energy consumption, manage pollution, and control traffic safety. Some automakers are even reclassifying their sedans as sports utility vehicles to avoid fuel mileage requirements, clearly suggesting that at least some of today's technological advancements in transportation are unsustainable

Journey–to–Work Patterns in the Age of Sprawl: Evidence from Two Mid–Size Southern Metropolitan Areas

Among others, one commonly identified negative consequence of urban sprawl is an increase in the length of the journey to work. However, there has been more discussion of this than serious scrutiny, hence the relationship between urban sprawl and commuting patterns, especially at the intraurban level, remains unclear. Using the 2000 Census Transportation Planning Package (CTPP) data for two Southeastern metropolitan areas, this research investigates the extent to which workers living in sprawl areas commute farther to work than those living in higher density areas. The analysis of variance confirms that workers commuting from sprawl areas to urban areas experience a longer commute in terms of time as well as mileage, though this varies when workplace and home locations are taken into account. However, multivariate statistical results suggest that there are limits to the utility of sprawl as a predictor of travel behavior compared to workers' socioeconomic characteristics, as other factors appear to be equally or more important