IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jotrge/v92y2021ics0966692321000910.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Geographies of run-commuting in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • Cook, Simon

Abstract

Drawing on the first academic research into run-commuting, this paper places running more firmly on the agenda within transport studies. Run-commuting is a rapidly growing mobile practice in which people run between work and home. Academically, very little is known about the practice, with scant research conducted into it. This paper begins to rectify this by critically exploring the geographies of run-commuting in the UK and the politics of mobility that emerge from this. Based on a survey of 287 UK run-commuters, this paper explores the broader trends and patterns within the locations, demographics and movements of run-commuters in the study. This reveals a highly socially-fractured practice with various privileges that enable and constraints that limit run-commuting possibilities. Run-commuting is racialised, gendered and classed with it being most popular with urban-dwelling middle-aged white men in highly paid professional jobs, social differentiations that punctuate much of the practice. This paper also shows the uniqueness of run-commuting as a mobile practice. Arguably more concerned with running than commuting, run-commuting is highly entwined with and affected by other practices of everyday life, notably the rhythms of work, home and exercise. Run-commuting research expands the scope of active travel and demonstrates the value of conversations between transport, mobility and sport studies in understanding such modes. It is also a practice that challenges many understandings held about transport, such as notions around motivation, speed, time, productivity and effort. Run-commuting is a productively provocative practice that opens up opportunities to think and do transport otherwise. This paper shows its worth to transport studies' agendas.

Suggested Citation

  • Cook, Simon, 2021. "Geographies of run-commuting in the UK," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:92:y:2021:i:c:s0966692321000910
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103038
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692321000910
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2021.103038?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Fang & Susan Handy, 2019. "Skateboarding for transportation: exploring the factors behind an unconventional mode choice among university skateboard commuters," Transportation, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 263-283, February.
    2. Una McGahern, 2019. "Making space on the run: exercising the right to move in Jerusalem," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(6), pages 890-905, November.
    3. Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Salomon, Ilan, 2001. "How derived is the demand for travel? Some conceptual and measurement considerations," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 35(8), pages 695-719, September.
    4. Yena Song & John M Preston & Christian Brand, 2013. "What Explains Active Travel Behaviour? Evidence from Case Studies in the UK," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 45(12), pages 2980-2998, December.
    5. Schwanen, Tim & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2005. "What if You Live in the Wrong Neighborhood? The Impact of Residential Neighborhood Type Dissonance on Distance Traveled," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt5hh713d6, University of California Transportation Center.
    6. Schwanen, Tim & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2005. "What Affects Commute Mode Choice: Neighborhood Physical Structure or Preferences Toward Neighborhoods?," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt4nq9r1c9, University of California Transportation Center.
    7. Simon Cook & Jon Shaw & Paul Simpson, 2016. "Jography: Exploring Meanings, Experiences and Spatialities of Recreational Road-running," Mobilities, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 11(5), pages 744-769, October.
    8. Jain, Juliet & Lyons, Glenn, 2008. "The gift of travel time," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 81-89.
    9. Cass, Noel & Faulconbridge, James, 2016. "Commuting practices: New insights into modal shift from theories of social practice," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-14.
    10. Lyons, Glenn & Urry, John, 2005. "Travel time use in the information age," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 39(2-3), pages 257-276.
    11. Schwanen, Tim & Banister, David & Anable, Jillian, 2012. "Rethinking habits and their role in behaviour change: the case of low-carbon mobility," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 522-532.
    12. Millward, Hugh & Spinney, Jamie & Scott, Darren, 2013. "Active-transport walking behavior: destinations, durations, distances," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 101-110.
    13. Mackie, P.J. & Jara-Díaz, S. & Fowkes, A.S., 0. "The value of travel time savings in evaluation," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 37(2-3), pages 91-106, April.
    14. Jestico, Ben & Nelson, Trisalyn & Winters, Meghan, 2016. "Mapping ridership using crowdsourced cycling data," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 90-97.
    15. Rachel Aldred & James Woodcock & Anna Goodman, 2016. "Does More Cycling Mean More Diversity in Cycling?," Transport Reviews, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(1), pages 28-44, January.
    16. Larsen, Jonas & Bærenholdt, Jørgen Ole, 2019. "Running together: The social capitals of a tourism running event," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    17. Tilahun, Nebiyou & Thakuriah, Piyushimita (Vonu) & Li, Moyin & Keita, Yaye, 2016. "Transit use and the work commute: Analyzing the role of last mile issues," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 359-368.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Teresa Cuerdo-Vilches & Miguel Ángel Navas-Martín & Ignacio Oteiza, 2021. "Working from Home: Is Our Housing Ready?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(14), pages 1-28, July.
    2. Cook, Simon & Stevenson, Lorna & Aldred, Rachel & Kendall, Matt & Cohen, Tom, 2022. "More than walking and cycling: What is ‘active travel’?," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 151-161.
    3. Hook, Hannah & De Vos, Jonas & Van Acker, Veronique & Witlox, Frank, 2022. "‘On a road to nowhere….’ analyzing motivations for undirected travel," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 148-164.
    4. Fernando de Frutos & Teresa Cuerdo-Vilches & Carmen Alonso & Fernando Martín-Consuegra & Borja Frutos & Ignacio Oteiza & Miguel Ángel Navas-Martín, 2021. "Indoor Environmental Quality and Consumption Patterns before and during the COVID-19 Lockdown in Twelve Social Dwellings in Madrid, Spain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(14), pages 1-45, July.
    5. Yang, Wei & Hu, Jie & Liu, Yong & Guo, Wenbo, 2023. "Examining the influence of neighborhood and street-level built environment on fitness jogging in Chengdu, China: A massive GPS trajectory data analysis," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cohen-Blankshtain, Galit, 2021. "On another track: Differing views of experts and politicians on rail investments in peripheral localities," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    2. Le, Huyen T.K. & Buehler, Ralph & Fan, Yingling & Hankey, Steve, 2020. "Expanding the positive utility of travel through weeklong tracking: Within-person and multi-environment variability of ideal travel time," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    3. Tang, Jia & Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Zhen, Feng, 2020. "How do passengers allocate and evaluate their travel time? Evidence from a survey on the Shanghai–Nanjing high speed rail corridor, China," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    4. Vale, David S., 2013. "Does commuting time tolerance impede sustainable urban mobility? Analysing the impacts on commuting behaviour as a result of workplace relocation to a mixed-use centre in Lisbon," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 38-48.
    5. Erika Sandow, 2014. "Til Work Do Us Part: The Social Fallacy of Long-distance Commuting," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 51(3), pages 526-543, February.
    6. Muhamad Rizki & Tri Basuki Joewono & Dimas B. E. Dharmowijoyo & Prawira Fajarindra Belgiawan, 2021. "Does multitasking improve the travel experience of public transport users? Investigating the activities during commuter travels in the Bandung Metropolitan Area, Indonesia," Public Transport, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 429-454, June.
    7. Veronique Van Acker & Frank Witlox, 2005. "Exploring the relationship between land-use system and travel behaviour - some first findings," ERSA conference papers ersa05p601, European Regional Science Association.
    8. Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2020. "Wenn die Telekommunikation den Verkehr so gut ersetzen kann, warum gibt es dann immer mehr Staus?," Forschungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Reutter, Ulrike & Holz-Rau, Christian & Albrecht, Janna & Hülz, Martina (ed.), Wechselwirkungen von Mobilität und Raumentwicklung im Kontext gesellschaftlichen Wandels, volume 14, pages 167-195, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    9. C. Angelo Guevara, 2017. "Mode-valued differences of in-vehicle travel time Savings," Transportation, Springer, vol. 44(5), pages 977-997, September.
    10. Raux, Charles & Souche, Stéphanie & Pons, Damien, 2012. "The efficiency of congestion charging: Some lessons from cost–benefit analyses," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 85-92.
    11. Mark Wardman & Glenn Lyons, 2016. "The digital revolution and worthwhile use of travel time: implications for appraisal and forecasting," Transportation, Springer, vol. 43(3), pages 507-530, May.
    12. Julia Ingenfeld & Tobias Wolbring & Herbert Bless, 2019. "Commuting and Life Satisfaction Revisited: Evidence on a Non-linear Relationship," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 20(8), pages 2677-2709, December.
    13. Nathalie Lenoir & Isabelle Laplace, 2017. "Beyond traditional value-of-time: passenger behavior for multimodal door-to-door travels in the age of information technologies," Post-Print hal-01704461, HAL.
    14. Marie Russell & Patricia Mokhtarian, 2015. "How real is a reported desire to travel for its own sake? Exploring the ‘teleportation’ concept in travel behaviour research," Transportation, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 333-345, March.
    15. Schad, Helmut, 2020. "Unterwegssein in Transferräumen und Zwischenwelten," Forschungsberichte der ARL: Aufsätze, in: Danielzyk, Rainer & Dittrich-Wesbuer, Andrea & Hilti, Nicola & Tippel, Cornelia (ed.), Multilokale Lebensführungen und räumliche Entwicklungen: ein Kompendium, volume 13, pages 203-208, ARL – Akademie für Raumentwicklung in der Leibniz-Gemeinschaft.
    16. Shamshiripour, Ali & Rahimi, Ehsan & (Kouros) Mohammadian, Abolfazl & Auld, Joshua, 2020. "Investigating the influence of latent lifestyles on productive travels: Insights into designing autonomous transit system," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 469-484.
    17. Choi, Sungtaek & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2020. "How attractive is it to use the internet while commuting? A work-attitude-based segmentation of Northern California commuters," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 138(C), pages 37-50.
    18. Holz-Rau, Christian & Scheiner, Joachim, 2011. "Safety and travel time in cost-benefit analysis: A sensitivity analysis for North Rhine-Westphalia," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 336-346, March.
    19. Hickman, Robin & Chen, Chia-Lin & Chow, Andy & Saxena, Sharad, 2015. "Improving interchanges in China: the experiential phenomenon," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 175-186.
    20. De Vos, Jonas & Witlox, Frank, 2013. "Transportation policy as spatial planning tool; reducing urban sprawl by increasing travel costs and clustering infrastructure and public transportation," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 117-125.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jotrge:v:92:y:2021:i:c:s0966692321000910. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-transport-geography .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.