# Towards Sustainable Regional Planning: Potential of Commuter Rail in the Madrid Urban Region
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Characterization of the Municipalities with and without Commuter Stations  
In the Madrid urban region, there are 250 municipalities with no commuter station and 45 (excluding Madrid) with at least one. As seen in Table 5, although Madrid has lost its majority share in relation to the population, it maintains its share in terms of employment, and it still is the main node of the regional urban system. The evolution and current proportion with respect to the population, employment and artificial land area show a commitment to an occupation model that does not seek to take advantage of the existence of the commuter network to promote greater growth in the municipalities with commuter stations. Thus, of the total demographic growth experienced in the Madrid urban region between 1991 and 2018, municipalities with a commuter station accounted for 804,400 people (47.4%), and municipalities without stations accounted for 916,700 (41.6%), while the population of Madrid city itself increased by 212,800 (representing only 11.0% of the total demographic growth of the urban region). Regarding the increase in employment for the same period, the municipalities with a commuter station accounted for 22.4% of the regional total, and those without stations accounted for 19.3%, while the city share was as large as 58.3%--even greater than all the other municipalities combined. The evolution of the population density and employment indices confirms that the urban and metropolitan space produced in recent decades is less dense. Considering the ratio between the commuter trips and the inhabitants in each municipality, Figure 2 shows a map of the degree of density for municipalities with and without a commuter station. This map illustrates that as we move away from Madrid city, densities go down. The only exceptions are the provincial capitals (Avila, Guadalajara, Segovia, and Toledo) and sometimes one of their neighbouring municipalities, and the eastern and southern axes towards Guadalajara and Toledo, respectively. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline  & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Public Transport**} & \multicolumn{4}{c}{**Private Motor Vehicle**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Other**} \\ \cline{2-9}  & **1996 1** & **2004 2** & **2018 3** & **1996** & **2004** & **2018** & **1996** & **2004** & **2018** \\ \hline Madrid city (municipality) & 2216.8 & 2927.7 & 2414.9 & 1171.8 & 1712.6 & 1690.6 & 137.2 & 215.7 & 230.2 \\ Madrid metropolitan belt & 302.5 & 547.6 & 493.5 & 874.1 & 1676.1 & 2445.0 & 92.9 & 114.1 & 92.1 \\ Madrid regional belt & 11.3 & 16.3 & 23.4 & 105.0 & 229.5 & 326.7 & 16.3 & 31.4 & 24.4 \\ Madrid city-metropolitan belt & 721.5 & 944.3 & 791.9 & 683.6 & 1016.7 & 1232.9 & 54.9 & 81.7 & 55.3 \\ Madrid city-regional belt & 36.8 & 91.6 & 69.4 & 35.9 & 832.2 & 111.0 & 3.2 & 3.1 & 3.7 \\ Metropolitan belt-regional belt & 17.1 & 40.7 & 42.4 & 69.8 & 163.1 & 267.7 & 8.7 & 13.0 & 13.8 \\ Outside the Community & 6.6 & 13.6 & 15.2 & 37.7 & 71.4 & 117.4 & 3.9 & 6.8 & 7.9 \\ of Madrid & & & & & & & & & \\ \hline \end{tabular}  
* 1: Of 4.9 million daily stages in public transport, commuter rail accounts for 10.9% (540,198). 2: Of 6.3 million daily stages in public transport, commuter rail accounts for 11.5% (733,396). 3: Of 5 million daily stages in public transport, commuter rail accounts for 11.5% (733,396). 3: Of 5 million daily stages in public transport, commuter rail accounts for 13.0% (650,000).  
\end{table} 
Table 4: Evolution of daily trips (thousands) within and between the Madrid municipality, its metropolitan belt, its regional belt, and outside the Community of Madrid (i.e., beyond the boundaries of the province and autonomous community) in 1996, 2004 and 2018. Source: EDM (1996, 2004, and 2018). In the municipalities without stations, very low densities prevail (200 out of 250, which account for 80% of them), while not even 1% reach a medium-high density (just 2 out of 250).