The Rational Locator Hypothesis posits that individuals can, if they choose, maintain approximately steady journey-to-work travel times by adjusting their home and workplace. This hypothesis was coupled with the observation of long-term stability indrive alone journey-to-work times in metropolitan Washington (those times were unchanged from 1957 through 1968 to 1988). Despite the increase of averagecommuting distance and congestion, trip duration remained constant or even declined when controlling for travel purpose and travel mode because of shifting a share of traffic from slow urban routes to faster suburban routes. This observation has significance, as it is important to know for travel demand analysis if there is an underlying budget, or even a regularity, as this helps us determine whether our forecasts are reasonable. To retest the underlying rationale for the hypothesis: that travel times are stable, both intra-metropolitan and inter-metropolitan comparisons of travel times are made. The intra-metropolitan analysis compared Washington DC data from 1968, 1988, and 1994, and Twin Cities data from 1990 and 2000. The results depend upon geography. For the larger Washington DC region, keeping the same geography shows little change in commute times, but using the larger 1994 area suggests an increase in commute times.However, the Twin Cities, starting from a much shorter commute time, shows a marked increase over the decade, using either the smaller or the larger geography. To explain the differences between the two areas, an inter-metropolitan analysis conducts a series of regressions on mean metropolitan travel time for the 65 largest metropolitan areas in theUnited States. The average commute time varies (positively) in these cities as a function of congestion and population density-both significant at the 99 percent confidence interval.Geographical area, population, and income were also significant at the 90 percent confidence interval. Despite the continuing observation of stability in drive alone commuting timesin metropolitan Washington, we reject the theory of personal commuting budgets, as we find that not only are commuting times not generally stable over time at the intra-metropolitan area, but that commuting time clearly depends on metropolitan spatial structure.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Minnesota: Nexus Research Group in its series Working Papers with number
200503.
Length: Date of creation: 2005 Date of revision: Publication status: Published in Transportation 32 187-202 Handle: RePEc:nex:wpaper:rationallocatorreexamined
Contact details of provider: Postal: Dept. of Civil Engineering, 500 Pillsbury Drive SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455 Phone: +01 (612) 625-6354 Fax: +01 (612) 626-7750 Web page: http://nexus.umn.edu More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (David Levinson).
Related research
Keywords:
Find related papers by JEL classification: R40 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics - - Transportation Systems - - - General D10 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - General D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: