Household Commuting: Implications of the Behavior of Two-Worker Households for Land- Use/Transportation Models

Single-worker households (and one worker’s commuting trade-offs) populate the world of urban economic theory. Alonso (1964) elaborated the locational choices facing “an individual”; it made no difference if that individual was a member of a multi-worker household because all individual workers would commute to the same city center. More complex models (e.g. White, 1977) assume two work sites (the CBD and a “suburban ring”) with all females commuting to the nearby suburban ring. Women’s worktrip times would tend to be longer if by transit (their value of time is less than that of men) but shorter if by private automobile (because they generally earn less, and here they tend to economize on the monetary costs of commuting). Alonso (1980) wrote about the rise of the two-worker household in the U.S. and speculated that, “… when there are several commuters rather than only one per household, and when non-working time is more valuable, … locational factors may play a stronger role, …. this factor may result in more concentrated development to reduce travel time. The most convenient point to two distant suburban work places may in many cases be a location more near the center.” (Alonso, 1980, p. 550). This view is challenged by Giuliano (1989) and Giuliano and Small (1993). Empirically, although the proportion of multi-worker households continues to expand, more concentrated development has not occurred.