Optimal job–housing location pattern considering congestion in network and its empirical study

Several studies have analyzed optimal job–housing location pattern problem, but these studies assume that travel time is constant. This assumption neglects the change of traffic congestion owing to job–housing reallocation. This paper extends the problem to include traffic congestion with network equilibrium model. After showing model formulation and algorithm, we apply the model to Tokyo metropolitan area with large-scaled road and railway network data. We show that optimal job–housing location pattern reduces total travel time, vehicle kilometers traveled, congestion in car and railway, and CO2 emissions effectively. We investigate further some scenarios that the ratio of reallocated commuters is changed and illustrate that not only reallocated commuters but also the other users benefit by travel time reduction.