IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdl/itsdav/qt8rg6h7gv.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of Telecommuting on Commute Time, Distance, and Speed of State of California Workers

Author

Listed:
  • Ory, David T
  • Mokhtarian, Patricia L

Abstract

Using retrospective data collected from a survey of more than 200 State of California workers, including current, former, and non-telecommuters, this study analyzes the relationship between telecommuting and commute time, distance, and speed over the ten-year period from 1988 to 1998. We find that telecommuters consistently live farther from work (in terms of time and distance) compared to former and future telecommuters. These longer one-way distances are ameliorated, however, by telecommuters traveling at higher speeds and commuting less frequently than their counterparts, with an end result of telecommuters commuting fewer person-miles and person-minutes, on average. About 70% of the commute time savings can be attributed to the faster speeds, with the remainder due to the lower distances traveled. Interestingly, in the aggregate, those who telecommute at some point in the ten-year period average slightly (2.6%) more commute person-miles traveled (although 4.4% less time) over the decade (even with the reductions offered by telecommuting) than those who do not telecommute at all. This finding suggests either that telecommuting is at best an ineffective travel reduction policy (i.e. those who engage in it do not travel any less) or that telecommuting disproportionately attracts those who would otherwise commute even more (making it an effective tool). A companion study addresses this question and finds that the latter explanation is the stronger one.

Suggested Citation

  • Ory, David T & Mokhtarian, Patricia L, 2005. "The Impact of Telecommuting on Commute Time, Distance, and Speed of State of California Workers," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt8rg6h7gv, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt8rg6h7gv
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/8rg6h7gv.pdf;origin=repeccitec
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kitamura, Ryuichi & Nilles, Jack M. & Conroy, Patrick & Fleming, David M., 1990. "Telecommuting as a Transportation Planning Meaure: Initial Results of California Pilot Project," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt6j96d49k, University of California Transportation Center.
    2. Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Handy, Susan L. & Salomon, Ilan, 1995. "Methodological issues in the estimation of the travel, energy, and air quality impacts of telecommuting," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 283-302, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pengyu Zhu, 2013. "Telecommuting, Household Commute and Location Choice," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(12), pages 2441-2459, September.
    2. Pengyu Zhu & Liping Wang & Yanpeng Jiang & Jiangping Zhou, 2018. "Metropolitan size and the impacts of telecommuting on personal travel," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 385-414, March.
    3. Pengyu Zhu, 2012. "Are telecommuting and personal travel complements or substitutes?," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 48(2), pages 619-639, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Georges A. Tanguay & Ugo Lachapelle, 2019. "Potential Impacts of Telecommuting on Transportation Behaviours, Health and Hours Worked in Québec," CIRANO Project Reports 2019rp-07, CIRANO.
    2. Choo, Sangho & Mokhtarian, Patricia L. & Salomon, Ilan, 2002. "Impacts of Home-Based Telecommuting on Vehicle-Miles Traveled: A Nationwide Time Series Analysis," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt2gj976x6, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    3. Su, Rongxiang & McBride, Elizabeth C. & Goulias, Konstadinos G., 2021. "Unveiling daily activity pattern differences between telecommuters and commuters using human mobility motifs and sequence analysis," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 106-132.
    4. Gong, Zhenwei & Liu, Wei & Zhang, Fangni, 2024. "Residential location choices and commuting patterns considering telecommuting," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 54-67.
    5. Pengyu Zhu, 2013. "Telecommuting, Household Commute and Location Choice," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 50(12), pages 2441-2459, September.
    6. Ory, David T. & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2005. "An Empirical Analysis of Causality in the Relationship between Telecommuting and Residential and Job Relocation," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt7235093r, University of California Transportation Center.
    7. Ozbilen, Basar & Wang, Kailai & Akar, Gulsah, 2021. "Revisiting the impacts of virtual mobility on travel behavior: An exploration of daily travel time expenditures," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 49-62.
    8. Shafizadeh, K. & Niemeier, D. & Mokhtarian, P. & Salomon, I., 1998. "The Costs And Benefits Of Telecommuting: An Evaluation Of Macro-scale Literature," Institute of Transportation Studies, Research Reports, Working Papers, Proceedings qt1f01c191, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley.
    9. Patricia L Mokhtarian & Gustavo O Collantes & Carsten Gertz, 2004. "Telecommuting, Residential Location, and Commute-Distance Traveled: Evidence from State of California Employees," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 36(10), pages 1877-1897, October.
    10. Varma, Krishna & Ho, Chaang-Iuan & Stanek, David & Mokhtarian, Patricia, 1998. "Duration and Frequency of Telecenter Use: Once a Telecommuter, Always a Telecommuter?," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt61t9j2vb, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    11. Kim, Sung Hoo & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2023. "Comparisons of observed and unobserved parameter heterogeneity in modeling vehicle-miles driven," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    12. Mokhtarian, Patricia & Varma, Krishna, 1998. "The Trade-Off Between Trips and Distance Traveled in Analyzing the Emissions Impacts of Center-Based Telecommuting," Institute of Transportation Studies, Working Paper Series qt43b756qg, Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Davis.
    13. Kim, Seung-Nam & Choo, Sangho & Mokhtarian, Patricia L., 2015. "Home-based telecommuting and intra-household interactions in work and non-work travel: A seemingly unrelated censored regression approach," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 197-214.
    14. Choo, Sangho & Mokhtarian, Patricia L, 2008. "Telecommunications and travel demand and supply: Aggregate structural equation models for the US," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt6q8518s4, University of California Transportation Center.
    15. Choo, Sangho, 2003. "Aggregate Relationships between Telecommunications and Travel: Structural Equation Modeling of Time Series Data," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt4p78h623, University of California Transportation Center.
    16. Elldér, Erik, 2020. "Telework and daily travel: New evidence from Sweden," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    17. Beck, Matthew J. & Hensher, David A., 2022. "Working from home in Australia in 2020: Positives, negatives and the potential for future benefits to transport and society," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 271-284.
    18. Han Dong & Cinzia Cirillo & Marco Diana, 2018. "Activity involvement and time spent on computers for leisure: an econometric analysis on the American Time Use Survey dataset," Transportation, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 429-449, March.
    19. Ory, David T & Mokhtarian, Patricia L, 2007. "Which Came First, the Telecommuting or the Residential Relocation? An Empirical Analysis of Causality," University of California Transportation Center, Working Papers qt18r9588k, University of California Transportation Center.
    20. Balbontin, Camila & Hensher, David A. & Beck, Matthew J. & Giesen, Ricardo & Basnak, Paul & Vallejo-Borda, Jose Agustin & Venter, Christoffel, 2021. "Impact of COVID-19 on the number of days working from home and commuting travel: A cross-cultural comparison between Australia, South America and South Africa," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Engineering; UCD-ITS-RR-05-23;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdl:itsdav:qt8rg6h7gv. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lisa Schiff (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/itucdus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.