University of California Transportation Center

This study compares the travel patterns of three different groups of workers identified in the 1991 Caltrans Statewide Travel Survey: home-based business (HBB) workers, home-based telecommuters (HBT), and non-home-based (NHB) workers. HBB workers have the highest average daily trip rate of the three groups, while rates for HBTs and NHB workers are statistically equivalent. Differences in drive-alone trip rates and time spent traveling are similar to those of other studies, with HBTs making 0.6 (18%) fewer trips and traveling 46% less time than NHB workers. Although HBB workers have the highest work-related trip rate, the NHB group makes nearly twice as many work and work-related trips combined as the HBB group, and more than three times as many as HBTs. The temporal distribution of HBB trips is unimodal, in contrast to the traditional bi-modal distribution for NHB trips and a flat distribution (from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.) for HBTs. The HBB group is quite heterogeneous, with distinct differences across industry in overall trip rates, freeway use, and rates by purpose.