Is neighborhood level Jobs-Housing Balance associated with travel behavior of commuters?: A case study on Dhaka City, Bangladesh

Abstract

Being one of the densely populated cities of the world, city dwellers of Dhaka have to face severe traffic congestion daily while commuting for different purposes. According to the World Bank report, Dhaka is losing around 3.2 billion working hours daily as the current average driving speed is about seven kilometers per hour. To ease traffic congestion, urban policymakers around the world are concentrating on the geographical balance between the locations of jobs and housing. Despite the apparent acceptance of jobs-housing balance as a policy tool to guide urban development, little empirical research has been carried out on jobs-housing balance and its relation to the travel behavior of the residents. This study aims to close this research gap by: (a) quantifying neighborhoodlevel jobs-housing balance; (b) investigating whether there are any significant differences in commuting time and distance of the resident workers in correspondence with different Job-Housing Ratio (JHR) values of neighbourhoods. This paper uses Traffic Analysis Zones (TAZs) demarcated on the Revised Strategic Transport Plan as a unit of measuring the Job-Housing Ratio, and then, TAZs have been categorized into three groups, named as Housing-rich, Balanced, and Employment-rich, in terms of the recommended range of Job-Housing Ratio. Residents' home-based commuting data have been calculated from 16,000 households who participated in Household Interview Survey of Revised Strategic Transport Plan 2015. Results demonstrate that Housing-rich neighbourhoods have a significantly longer commuting distance and time than both Balanced and Employment-rich neighbourhoods. Above all, both commuting time and distance show exponentially declining relation, but with a decreasing rate, in correspondence with JHR. The study output suggests that the achievement of a balance between jobs and housing in a neighborhood would be beneficial for the people to economize the commuting time and distance.