Article ID: | iaor2003528 |
Country: | United Kingdom |
Volume: | 36A |
Issue: | 7 |
Start Page Number: | 573 |
End Page Number: | 592 |
Publication Date: | Aug 2002 |
Journal: | Transportation Research. Part A, Policy and Practice |
Authors: | Schwanen Tim, Dijst Martin |
Keywords: | work, transportation: road, urban affairs |
For a better understanding of commuting behavior, the home-to-work journey has to be addressed in the context of daily time use. Although many studies have analyzed commuting times, the influence of the time spent working on the home-to-work travel time has only been investigated indirectly. This paper uses the travel-time ratio concept to investigate the association between work duration and commuting. We describe the theoretical framework of the travel-time ratio and analyze realized travel-time ratios for work activities with data from the 1998 Dutch National Travel Survey. It is shown that workers, on average, spend 10.5% of the time available for work and travel on commuting, which corresponds to 28 min (single trip) for an 8-h workday. The travel-time ratio varies systematically with sociodemographic variables; urban form is of rather limited importance in the explanation of travel-time ratio values.