Welsh Journals

The Changing Journey to Work: Evidence from Lower Swansea Valley Firms 1962-79. ROSEMARY D.F.BROMLEY Department of Geography, University College of Swansea. (Received April 1980: in revised form July 1980) Abstract The changing journey to work in the Lower Swansea Valley is exam- ined using data supplied by manufacturing firms in 1962 and 1979. The paper reveals the lengthening of the journey to work, and shows how the differences between the commuting patterns of wage- earning and salaried employees have increased. A tentative com- parison between new and long-established firms suggests that new firms, possibly more than the old, still draw a significant proportion of their labour force from the local area. Introduction This study focuses on the extent and nature of changes in local commuting patterns. Swansea has witnessed a growing concen- tration of jobs into restricted parts of the urban area, and has seen an increasing spread of low-density residential suburbs, trends which are common to most industrial cities in Britain (Herbert 1972, 37-38; Smith 1971, 485-491). These trends, combined with rising levels of real income and car-ownership, have resulted in a lengthening of the journey to work. Such journeys are one of the most important types of regular movement made within and between urban areas, and are, therefore, of particular significance to academics and planners alike. Despite their importance, however, journey-to- work changes at the local scale have been little investigated, due to the lack of easily available data at this level. This research investigation diverges from the usual analyses of journey to work in three ways: it is based on data supplied by individ- ual firms rather than a population census; it examines change through time rather than analysing the pattern at a single date; and it focuses on a single employment zone, rather than adopting a broader regional approach generally necessitated by the use of census information. The data, from various firms in Swansea for 1962 and 1979, permit an assessment of the extent to which the proportion of employees living close to their place of work has fallen in recent years. In the investigation, three specific questions are