Satisfaction with travel, ideal commuting, and accessibility to employment

Abstract

This paper explores relationships between commuting times, job accessibility, and commuting satisfaction based on a large-scale survey applied in the Greater London Area (GLA), the municipality of São Paulo (MSP) and the Dutch Randstad (NLR). Potential accessibility to jobs is estimated under 3 different scenarios: reported actual commuting times (ACT), ideal commuting times (ICT), and maximum willingness to commute (MCT). In addition, binary logistic regression models, estimated using generalized linear modeling (GLM), are performed to assess the impact of these temporal preferences on the likelihood of being satisfied with commuting. As expected, ideal and maximum commuting preferences strongly impact the volume and spatial distribution of the measured accessibility to jobs. In the selected case studies, estimated ICT-based job accessibility significantly decreases total measured accessibility (60 to 100 percent), with those living in the lowest accessibility zones impacted most. Furthermore, although specific results varied between regions, the overall findings show an association between ACT and satisfaction. Likewise, commuting mode is found to be a strong predictor of travel satisfaction. Those actively traveling in all three metropolitan regions tend to be more satisfied with their commutes. Potential job accessibility is found to be only weakly associated with travel satisfaction.