Interrelationships of Job-housing Relocations and Commuting Patterns

During the past few decades, the populations of many U.S. and European cities have shown the same residence and workplace mobility patterns: Annually, approximately 10 percent of the population changed residences and approximately 20 percent of employed workers changed workplaces within the same metropolitan area. Even though the Seattle metropolitan region experienced a substantial amount of residential and workplace mobility and a boom in employment and population in the 1990s, the morning commute time and distance was roughly constant. To explain this situation, researchers have proposed a co-location hypothesis, that is, residents and workers will change their residence or workplace or both adapt to worsening congestion.This research attempted to shed light on the mechanism of the co-location hypothesis and commute mode adjustment using the Puget Sound Transportation Panel data consisting of seven waves of 2 consecutive years between 1989 and 1997 conducted by the Puget Sound Regional Council. This study attempted to understand commuting patterns by residential and workplace changers.