Commuting in multinodal urban systems: An empirical comparison of three alternative models

Actual commuting in the urban regions

Before considering the empirical results of the three different models this section looks
briefly at the actual commuter flows. In this, the average actual commuting distances for each
of the four urban regions is central. Commuting and distance matrices have been developed
for this purpose. The commuting matrix shows the number of commuters travelling back and
forth between the municipalities within the urban regions (shown in figure 1). The distance
matrix shows the distances by the usual road between the different municipalities. By this
matrix and the information on place of residence and employment location each commuter
gets a specific distance value (Van der Laan e.a. 1994).

Table 2

Commuting data of the four urban regions

Source: Calculations based on CBS (1993)

Table 2 shows that most commuting occurs in the urban region of Amsterdam. The total
commuting distance is more than twice as large as in the next urban region, Rotterdam.
Utrecht and The Hague are relatively less important. With respect to the number of
commuters the differences are smaller, yet quite apparent. There are marked differences in
average commuter distance, too. The highest average distance is found in the urban region of
Amsterdam: 20.2 km. The average commuter distance in the region of The Hague is only
slightly more than half of this: 11.1 km. However, comparing the averages of the actual
commuter distance of the four regions is a difficult matter as this strongly depends on the size
of the area. Relating the total commuting distance per region to the total area of that same
region changes the picture considerably. This becomes clear in the last column of table 2,
which shows the number of commuters per square kilometre, representing the commuting
intensity for each of the urban regions. It now turns out that The Hague is most commuter
intensive. Amsterdam is a good second.

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