Job/housing imbalance and commuting time in the Atlanta metropolitan area: Exploration of causes of longer commuting time

Commuting is the major source of congestion and air pollution in the United States. For almost a decade, urban policy-makers have been concerned about the geographical balance between locations of jobs and housing as a strategy for reducing traffic congestion and air pollution in American cities. Despite the popularity and apparent acceptance of the job/housing (J/H) imbalance concept among public policy-makers, little empirical research has been done on the J/H imbalance and how it relates to commuting patterns. This research examines commuting patterns in the Atlanta metropolitan area to determine the extent to which commuting flow volume is the result of an imbalance between the location of home and workplace by using the most sophisticated and largest geographical scale data provided by the 1990 U.S. Census of Transportation Planning Package. This paper uses a Geographic Information System (GIS) to measure the job/housing imbalance within a commuting catchment area having a 7-mile radius from the centroid of each Transportation Analysis Zone. Analysis of variance, stepwise multiple regression and cartographic evidence all confirm the relationship between the imbalance of jobs and housing (J/H) and mean travel time to work. This investigation highlights the fact that the imbalance between the location of jobs and housing is the most important determinant for longer commuting and suggests that higher quality housing growth close to the job-rich communities may benefit the workers to economize the commuting time.