The use of the car to go to work in medium-sized cities, Mexico

Authors

Abstract

Although much research has been done on car commuting, it has been warned that more studies on this topic should be carried out in medium-sized cities, particularly in developing countries. This article describes commuting conditions in Mexican medium-sized cities and unveils why workers use the car for going to work. The study is based on housing and population censuses, and surveys on public security, and the characteristics of urban layout. Descriptive statistics showed a great increase in car commuting in medium-sized cities from 2015 to 2020. It was also discovered that car commuting correlated with shorter commuting times, and that socioeconomic variables were the most important factors to explain car commuting. Considering such discoveries, it is argued that decisive policies should be implemented to prevent that car use could foster urban sprawl in medium-sized cities today, as it did in big metropolis some decades ago.

Keywords:

Medium-sized cities, car commuting, car use determinants, Mexico