University of California Transportation Center

The growth of the Internet has rekindled interest in the relationship between communications and travel. New communication technologies have expanded the range, the type, and the number of transactions that can take place without travel. A number of promotions capture the new tradeoffs between communications and travel: initially, the Internet was referred to as "the information superhighway" and Microsoft ran an ad campaign dubbed "where do you want to go today?" The connection between travel and bytes has been summed up as "The Death of Distance" (Cairncross, 1997).