Satisfaction with travel, ideal commuting, and accessibility to employment

This paper explores relationships between commuting times, job accessibility, and commuting satisfaction based on a large-scale survey applied in the Greater London Area (GLA), the municipality of São Paulo (MSP) and the Dutch Randstad (NLR). Potential accessibility to jobs is estimated under 3 different scenarios: reported actual commuting times (ACT), ideal commuting times (ICT), and maximum willingness to commute (MCT). In addition, binary logistic regression models, estimated using generalized linear modeling (GLM), are performed to assess the impact of these temporal preferences on the likelihood of being satisfied with commuting. As expected, ideal and maximum commuting preferences strongly impact the volume and spatial distribution of the measured accessibility to jobs. In the selected case studies, estimated ICT-based job accessibility significantly decreases total measured accessibility (60 to 100 percent), with those living in the lowest accessibility zones impacted most. Furthermore, although specific results varied between regions, the overall findings show an association between ACT and satisfaction. Likewise, commuting mode is found to be a strong predictor of travel satisfaction. Those actively traveling in all three metropolitan regions tend to be more satisfied with their commutes. Potential job accessibility is found to be only weakly associated with travel satisfaction.

Satisfaction with Selected Indicators of the Quality of Urban Space by Polonia in the Greater Toronto Area

The main objective of this article is to determine the quality of life of Polonia living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), with particular emphasis on urban quality, which influences their assessment of the standard of living in this city. The presented results of the research are based on a survey questionnaire conducted with the participation of 583 respondents. The respondents evaluated, among others: accessibility to recreational tourism in the city, public transport, possibilities of finding a job, accessibility to housing and quality of the natural environment. Assessment of the selected indicators was correlated with the application of the statistical coefficient of the chi-squared test with particular sociodemographic characteristics of the examined respondents (with age, place of residence of the respondents (Toronto, suburbs) and their duration of residence in the GTA). On the basis of the formulated research hypotheses and conducted studies, it can be concluded—among others—that the satisfaction level with regard to accessibility to housing increases with age, that people living in the GTA suburbs rate accessibility to transportation lower than people living in Toronto and that people living in the GTA for more than 20 years rate accessibility to tourism, leisure and relaxation lower than people living in the GTA for a period shorter than 20 years.

Does better job accessibility help people gain employment? The role of public transport in Great Britain

The combined decentralisation of many firms and services and the increasing concentration of traditional public transport services in the main corridors of urban centres have made it more difficult for people to access jobs, in particular when residing outside these prime accessibility areas. This is the first national study within the context of Great Britain to examine whether better public transport job accessibility, modelled at the micro level of individuals, improves employment probabilities for people living in Great Britain. While previous studies have typically concentrated on US metropolitan areas, our study uses British national employment micro datasets to assess which urban and rural areas and population groups would benefit from better public transport services. In an important departure from most standard accessibility methodologies, we computed a public transport job accessibility measure applied nationwide and combined this with individual-level employment probability models for Great Britain. The models were corrected for endogeneity by applying an instrumental variable approach. The study finds that better public transport job accessibility improves individual employment probabilities, in particular in metropolitan areas and smaller cities and towns with lower car ownership rates and in low-income neighbourhoods. It further shows that mainly lower educated groups and young people would benefit from better public transport job accessibility. The findings in this study are important for policymakers in that they imply that, in particular, job seekers who rely on public transport services may benefit from more targeted public policies to improve their accessibility to employment and thereby their social mobility.