Revealed Preferences: The 30-Minute Commute
20th December 2019
The principal reason that large cities have developed is that they provide large labor (and housing) markets. A labor market is also a housing market, since virtually all who work in the metropolitan area also live there. The metropolitan area is the one location where there is one-to-one balance between jobs and resident workers (see: Alain Bertaud, Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities). Labor markets are independent of jurisdictional boundaries (municipality, county, or state), except where international boundaries restrict freedom of labor movement.
Obviously, large labor markets require transportation that permits residents to reach the maximum of jobs in a reasonable period of time (such as 30 minutes, which has historical significance, indicated below). Researchers such as Remy Prud’homme, Chang-Won Lee, David Hartgen, Gregory Fields and Steve Polzin have shown that a metropolitan area is likely to have better economic performance and job creation if a larger number of jobs can be reached by the average worker in a specified period. With the relatively recent development of transportation access measures, the 30-minute one – way work trip (commute) has emerged as an important planning standard (referred to herein as “30-minute commutes”).