Metropolitan size and the impacts of telecommuting on personal travel

Telecommuting has been proposed by policy makers as a strategy to reduce travel and emissions. In studying the metropolitan size impact of telecommuting on personal travel, this paper addresses two questions: (1) whether telecommuting is consistently a substitute or complement to travel across different MSA sizes; and (2) whether the impact of telecommuting is higher in larger MSAs where telecommuting programs and policies have been more widely adopted. Data from the 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Surveys are used. Through a series of tests that address two possible empirical biases, we find that telecommuting consistently had a complementary effect on one-way commute trips, daily total work trips and daily total non-work trips across different MSA sizes in both 2001 and 2009. The findings suggest that policies that promote telecommuting may indeed increase, rather than decrease, people’s travel demand, regardless of the size of the MSA. This seems to contradict what telecommuting policies are designed for. In addition, model results show that the complementary impact of telecommuting on daily travel is lower in larger MSAs, in terms of both daily total work trips and daily total non-work trips.

• Record URL:
  • https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-017-9846-3
• Availability:
  • Find a library where document is available. Order URL: http://worldcat.org/issn/00494488
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Copyright © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media New York. The contents of this paper reflect the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the Transportation Research Board or the National Academy of Sciences.
• Authors:
  • Zhu, Pengyu
  • 0000-0002-0892-3606
  • Wang, Liping
  • Jiang, Yanpeng
  • Zhou, Jiangping
• Publication Date: 2018-3

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Web
• Features: References;
• Pagination: pp 385-414
• Serial:
  • Transportation
  • Volume: 45
  • Issue Number: 2
  • Publisher: Springer
  • ISSN: 0049-4488
  • EISSN: 1572-9435
  • Serial URL: http://link.springer.com/journal/11116

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Metropolitan areas; Telecommuting; Travel behavior; Trip purpose
• Identifier Terms: National Household Travel Survey
• Uncontrolled Terms: Personal travel
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Transportation (General);

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01669697
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS
• Created Date: May 22 2018 5:18PM