Travel Distances in Daily Travel and Long-Distance Travel: What Role is Played by Urban Form?

There is a lot of research on spatial differences in travel behaviour, specifically on travel distances. This research suggests that the distances travelled by the inhabitants of municipalities with lower population and neighbourhoods with lower density and less mixed land use are longer than those travelled by the inhabitants of cities with higher population, high density, and greater mixed land use. However, related studies focus mainly on daily travel. In this paper we study travel distances in daily trips based on random day trip diaries and long-distance trips for private and business purposes based on retrospective questions in the same questionnaire, asking about “longer journeys with overnight stay” within three months of the survey. We use Heckman models and ordinary least squares regressions to study the effects of municipality size classes based on population, population density, and land-use mix, while controlling for sociodemographics. We find distances travelled on long-distance trips and daily trips to be affected by sociodemographics in much the same way, while spatial effects affect distances travelled on daily and long-distance trips mostly in different directions. Residents of small municipalities and low-density neighbourhoods make fewer and/or shorter long-distance journeys than those living in large cities and high-density neighbourhoods, but the latter travel shorter distances in their daily lives.