Travel behavior researchers have developed a number of hypotheses regarding the transportation impacts of telecommuting -- using telecommunications technology to work from home or another location remote from one's primary office. Until recently, there was little empirical data available to test these hypotheses. Now, however, a number of telecommuting projects are being evaluated with respect to changes in travel behavior. This paper reports work-in-progress on the transportation evaluation of four telecommuting projects in Southern California. The original findings from one of these projects are presented here, and related to previously reported results. The survey used in these projects obtains information on potential changes in mode choice, auto ownership, residential location, and activity patterns due to telecommuting.

Several travel indicators were compared between telecommuting (TC) days and non-telecommuting days for a sample of 72 center-based telecommuters in California. Distance traveled decreased significantly on TC days, with average reductions of 51 person-miles (58%) and 35 vehicle-miles (53%). When weighted by telecommuting frequency, average reductions of 11.9% in PMT and 11.5% in VMT were found over a five-day work week. Person-trips and vehicle-trips increased slightly (but not significantly) on TC days. This was due to statistically significant increases in commute trips by telecommuters (who more often went home for lunch on their TC days), partly counteracted by decreases in non-commute travel. The drive-alone mode share increased on TC days, both for all trips, and for commute trips in particular. Walking and biking shares also increased modestly on TC days, whereas shares of transit and ridesharing declined. Despite the increase in trip rates, TC-day reductions were found for all pollutants analyzed: 15% for total organic gas emissions, 21% for carbon monoxide, 35% for oxides of nitrogen, and 51% for particulate matter. The reduction in VMT more than compensated for the marginal increase in number of trips (and consequently, cold starts) on telecommuting days.

This paper provides an overview of the status of telecommuting in the United States, especially as it relates to changes in travel behavior. Regarding the state of the practice, the paper discusses some refinements to the definition of telecommuting that have developed through increased operational experience. It reports several policy statements involving telecommuting, and explores the appeal of telecommuting as a public policy instrument. It highlights some trends in the implementation of home-based and work center-based telecommuting, and suggests that visible public-sector involvement has been crucial to the increased activity in this area.

In sketching the state of the art, the paper outlines some frequently-stated hypothesis on telecommuting and travel behavior, and summarizes current empirical findings relating to those hypotheses. Finally, it suggests a variety of topics suitable for further research. These include studying factors influencing the ultimate adoption levels of telecommuting; impacts of energy/air quality, mode choice, and location/urban form; interactions with other transportation demand management strategies; relationships to the traditional urban travel demand forecasting process; cost/benefit tradeoffs; and telecommuting centers.

We contest the derived demand paradigm for travel as a behavioral absolute. To the contrary, we suggest that travel has an intrinsic positive utility and is valued for its own sake, not just as a means of reaching a destination. We argue that the same positive characteristics that lead people to engage in travel as a recreational activity in itself, are likely to motivate them to engage in apparently excess travel in the context of their mandatory and maintenance activities as well. This paper explores the conceptual basis of a positive utility for travel, and presents some results from an ongoing empirical study of attitudes toward travel. In modeling distance traveled (in each of 11 categories), we found that subjective variables such as Travel Liking, the adventure-seeker Personality trait, the travel stress Attitudinal factor, and the Excess Travel indicator added considerable explanatory power to the Demographic variables traditionally used in such models. It appears that, far from being completely determined by demographically-based needs, the amount of travel demanded is heavily influenced by one’s attitudes toward travel. This is not only true for discretionary (entertainment) purposes as would be expected, but for more “mandatory” purposes such as work/school-related activities as well. We are convinced that the demand for travel arises from a fundamental human need for mobility and other subjective characteristics, as well as from the external causes typically measured. To more accurately forecast travel demand and policy response, the role of those subjective characteristics needs to be understood much better than we do at present.

Interest in telecommuting is growing among workers, employers, transportation planners, communities, the telecommunications industry, and others. But actual levels of telecommuting appear to be increasing slowly, although there is little reliable data on trends. The future of telecommuting depends on whether employers provide the opportunity to telecommute and whether workers take advantage of this opportunity; government policies can encourage both. This article addresses that future by outlining and evaluating important trends in a variety of factors and explores the need for further research on telecommuting trends and impacts. For the most part the future of telecommuting looks promising, but many questions remain about how telecommuting will evolve over time.

Both as a business response to internal business problems, and as a transportation demand management (TDM) strategy, telecommuting is gaining acceptance in the United States and elsewhere. Yet there is no consensus on what actually does and does not constitute telecommuting. This paper first indicates why approaching such a consensus is important. It then discusses the definition of telecommuting in two different contexts. In the first case, telecommuting is considered in the abstract, in the context of a variety of other remote work options. Each of the remote work options is classified according to its transportation impacts and its managerial implications. In the second case, the efforts of one group to define non-home-based telecommuting in the specific context of an air quality regulation designed to reduce travel are documented.

This paper defines the relationship between telecommunications and transportation, by expanding on linkages already identified in the literature, by identifying additional relationships, and by putting these relationships into a robust conceptual framework. There are conceptual, physical, analytical, and regulatory parallels between telecommunications and transportation. Telecommunications affects the demand for, and supply of, transportation -- and vice versa. In the broadest sense, all communication requires transportation in order to occur: transportation either of people, or objects or of electronic impulses. In other words, communication takes place via one or more of those three modes. It is suggested that "communication breeds communication." That is, the easier it is to communicate (whether through travel or telecommunications), or the more that one or another form of communication takes place, the more that communication as a whole is stimulated. The relative shares of each of the three modes of communication may vary as one mode partially substitutes for another, but the absolute amounts of communication via each mode are likely to increase. Two empirical studies are summarized, one illustrating that teleconferencing increased travel, the other illustrating that telecommuting decreased travel. Other implications for transportation planning are highlighted.

On February 20, 1986, the regular monthly meeting of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) Transportation and Communications Committee was held as a two-way videoconference. Analysis of travel changes associated with the videoconference showed that vehicle miles traveled actually increased, compared to an average meeting held at the usual single location at SCAG offices. Although the average distance per person to the nearest teleconference site was 24% lower than the distance to the SCAG offices, the attendance at the teleconference was so much higher than average that total VMT was 29% higher than for a typical meeting held at SCAG.

Information on the number and types of communication activities (including travel) engaged in over a period of four consecutive days, at two points in time about six months apart, was collected from 91 respondents in the context of the introduction of a community network to the city of Davis, California. Three major types of communication were measured: personal meetings (and in a separate but related measure, trips), transfer of an information object (in-house documents, regular mail, and express or overnight mail), and electronic (phone, fax, and e-mail). A system of structural equations was developed and estimated, expressing the number of instances of each type of communication at time 2 as a function of: the number of instances of each type at time 1, the elapsed time between measurements, and exogenous sociodemographic variables. All "own" lagged effects (that is, the effect of one communication type in wave 1 on the same type of communication in wave 2) were found to be positive and (except for information object delivery) highly significant. The "elapsed time" variable was always positive and (except for personal meetings and, in one model, information object delivery) significant; these effects indicate net generation of communication activities over time. Significant "cross" lagged effects (that is, the effect of one communication type in wave 1 on a different type in wave 2) were mostly positive, indicating the presence of some complementarity effects across modes. However, relationships specifically between electronic forms of communication and personal meetings or trips were not significant in either direction for the final models. Several exogenous variables were significant in logical ways.