IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/jtralu/0137.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A note on commuting times and city size: Testing variances as well as means

Author

Listed:
  • An, Qian

    (University of Southern California)

  • Gordon, Peter

    (University of Southern California)

  • Moore II, James

    (University of Southern California)

Abstract

Relatively little attention has been paid to the relationship between commute time variances and city size. In this paper, we utilize 2009 Nationwide Highway Travel Survey data and test the relationship between area commute-time means as well as variances in metropolitan-area size. We include tests for metropolitan areas as a whole and for residents from urban, suburban, second city, and town-and-county areas. The regression analysis shows that all estimated slopes are statistically significant but not much greater than zero. Commute time means and variances are highly correlated. These relationships are also invariant with respect to the place of residence. An extensive collection of literature provides evidence for the co-location of workers and jobs hypothesis: average commute times do not rise appreciably as metropolitan population increases. We conclude that these results are additional, although indirect, evidence for the co-location hypothesis.

Suggested Citation

  • An, Qian & Gordon, Peter & Moore II, James, 2014. "A note on commuting times and city size: Testing variances as well as means," The Journal of Transport and Land Use, Center for Transportation Studies, University of Minnesota, vol. 7(2), pages 105-110.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:jtralu:0137
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.jtlu.org/index.php/jtlu/article/download/427/444
    File Function: A note on commuting times and city size: Testing variances as well as means
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kemeny, Thomas & Storper, Michael, 2012. "Specialization and regional economic development," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 58538, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Bumsoo LEE & Peter GORDON, 2011. "Urban Structure: Its Role In Urban Growth, Net New Business Formation And Industrial Churn," Region et Developpement, Region et Developpement, LEAD, Universite du Sud - Toulon Var, vol. 33, pages 137-159.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicole Adler & Georg Hirte & Shravana Kumar & Hans-Martin Niemeier, 2022. "The impact of specialization, ownership, competition and regulation on efficiency: a case study of Indian seaports," Maritime Economics & Logistics, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association of Maritime Economists (IAME), vol. 24(3), pages 507-536, September.
    2. Peng Ji & Lilin Yuan, 2023. "Whether polycentric spatial structure is conducive to regional coordinated development: A study on urban agglomerations in China," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 940-961, December.
    3. María Delgado Gómez-Flors & Maite Alguacil, 2018. "The Impact of Immigrant Diversity on Wages. The Spanish Experience," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(9), pages 1-29, September.
    4. Paolo VENERI & David BURGALASSI, 2011. "Spatial Structure and Productivity in Italian NUTS-3 Regions," Working Papers 364, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    5. Nicola Cortinovis & Frank Oort, 2015. "Variety, economic growth and knowledge intensity of European regions: a spatial panel analysis," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 55(1), pages 7-32, October.
    6. Martin Andersson & Johan P Larsson & Joakim Lundblad, 2015. "The Productive City Needs both - localization and urbanization economies across spatial scales in the city," ERSA conference papers ersa15p385, European Regional Science Association.
    7. Wan Li & Bindong Sun & Tinglin Zhang, 2019. "Spatial structure and labour productivity: Evidence from prefectures in China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(8), pages 1516-1532, June.
    8. Haidong Yu & Yong Liu & Juanjuan Zhao & Gen Li, 2019. "Urban Total Factor Productivity: Does Urban Spatial Structure Matter in China?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-18, December.
    9. Aarstad, Jarle & Kvitastein, Olav A. & Jakobsen, Stig-Erik, 2016. "Related and unrelated variety as regional drivers of enterprise productivity and innovation: A multilevel study," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 844-856.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Commute Time; Variance; Population; Sprawl; Co-location;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R40 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Transportation Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:jtralu:0137. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Arlene Mathison (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ctumnus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.