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

10. The cross-traffic model

In the present situation, with more and more polynodality, it is increasingly plausible that
wasteful commuting results from cross-commuting. That is, commuter traffic is going in other
directions than towards the centre of the urban region. As discussed, the commuting distance
in the case of cross-traffic is calculated from the potential labour force per municipality and
the distance towards the nearest-by municipality. The neighbouring municipality with the
shortest distance by the usual road is selected. The figures for the distances of each
municipality were added up for each of the urban regions and, related to the entire potential
labour force of those regions. All other presuppositions still hold. This also includes that
employment location is still exogeneous to population location.

Commuting distances and wasteful commuting by the cross-traffic

model

Table 7 shows that including cross-commuting leads to a considerable reduction of wasteful
commuting. The percentage of excess kilometres is reduced to about half of the actual
commuting distance. Wasteful commuting was clearly higher in the other models. Particularly
The Hague, with a percentage of slightly over 45%, now shows a considerable reduction in
wasteful commuting. The value of Amsterdam is still relatively high: 60.4% but considerably
lower. Starting from a polynodal urban region with cross-traffic results inevitably in a
considerable improvement of the explanatory power of the basic model. This is the
affirmative answer to the second main question of this article. The adapted model is more in
accordance with actual commuting behaviour.

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