Spatial accessibility, commuters and spatial development

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The focus of this research is the identification of the structural changes in commuting behaviour since 1970 as a function of the dynamics of spatial accessibility and population redistribution. The project aims to test three hypotheses derived from the literature: a) that the suburban fringes have decoupled from their respective core cities and that this maturation of suburbia leads to a reduction in commuting distances; b) that high-density settlements are associated with low commuting volumes (i.e. shorter home to work distances) even when incoming and outgoing trips are considered jointly; c) that the effect of further improvements in accessibility on commuter behaviour has declined markedly over time. The comparison between Germany and Switzerland allows for an identification of the effects of different spatial planning and transport planning strategies.Several hypotheses have been worked out so far: The increasing complexity of commuting linkage has been analysed by the mean of commuting regions of each municipality in Switzerland. In four case studies of Germany, reducing of commuting distance beside a suburbanisation process has not been detected.In terms of methodology, for hypothesis a) a new procedure has been developed that can automatically identify overlapping catchment areas b) new procedures for allocating transport volume to origin and destination are developed so that transport volume can then be explained with methodologies of spatial statistics. In future research the usual discrete models of mode choice and destination choice that can be used for c) have to be expanded in order to catch possible effects of spatial correlation.