The consequences of sprawl for travel behavior remain unclear. Theory suggests at least two possible commuting outcomes. As jobs decentralize and central employment areas congest, workers might shorten their commutes in time and distance by relocating to the suburbs. Or, the average commute could grow if residential choice is relatively inelastic with respect to job location, amenity explanations for residential and job location dominate, or as dual-worker households in polycentric labor markets become the norm.
Evidence on these questions is surprisingly rare and dated. For data on individual travel behavior, we use the American Housing Survey, a detailed individual-level panel survey for most major metropolitan areas of the U.S. for several years between 1985 and 1997. Commute distance is regressed on a reduced form travel demand model, including U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis measures of metro-wide employment deconcentration at the one-digit SIC industry level. The model specification conforms to urban form theory, the model estimation uses panel techniques, and the potential endogeneity of wages and land costs -- as compensations for commute costs -- is addressed statistically.
We find that the more suburbanized is employment -- that is, the more sprawl -- the shorter the average commute. There are strong differences by industry, however, that may reflect a combination of industry agglomeration effects, differential job location stability by industry, and historical transitions.
