Commuting and land use in a city with bottlenecks: Theory and evidence

This paper studies the interaction between urban spatial equilibrium and commuting congestion dynamics. We present a new monocentric city framework that combines a discrete urban space with multiple Vickrey (1969) type bottlenecks. The model illustrates commute scheduling patterns by residents at different locations in the city. We confirm empirically the relationship between residential location and commute timing choices predicted by the model. In particular, we find that commuters traveling a longer distance tend to arrive at work at the edge of the morning peak time while commuters with a shorter distance tend to arrive at the peak time. We also characterize the optimal policy of congestion toll and analyzes its impact on urban spatial structure.