published journal article

Will COVID-19 Jump-Start Telecommuting? Evidence from California

Abstract

Health concerns and government restrictions have caused a surge in work from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in a sharp increase in telecommuting. However, it is not clear if it will perdure after the pandemic, and what socio-economic groups will be most affected. To investigate the impact of the pandemic on telecommuting, we analyzed a dataset collected for us at the end of May 2021 by Ipsos via a random survey of Californians in KnowledgePanel©, the largest and oldest probability-based panel in the US. Structural equation models used in this research account for car ownership and housing costs to explain telecommuting frequency before, during, and possibly after the pandemic. Research findings point to an additional 4.2% of California workers expect to engage in some level of telecommuting post-pandemic, which is substantial but possibly less than suggested in other studies. Some likely durable gains can be expected for Californians who work in management, business / finance / administration, and engineering / architecture / law / social sciences. Workers with more education started telecommuting more during the pandemic, a trend expected to continue post-pandemic. Full time work status has a negative impact on telecommuting frequency, and so does household size during and after the pandemic.

published journal article

Dividing Highways: Barrier Effects and Environmental Justice in California

Abstract

We examine the barrier effects of freeways in California. We analyze the association between freeways and nearby street network connectivity and quantify the frequency and quality of crossings—underpasses or bridges that enable pedestrians and cyclists to cross the freeway. We find that barrier effects are most pronounced in communities of color. We also find that even where crossings exist, they are unpleasant or even hazardous for pedestrians and cyclists because of high-speed traffic on on- and off-ramps, and because large volumes of traffic are funneled through a small number of crossings rather than being distributed over a wider network.

policy brief

Lessons Learned from Abroad: Potential Influence of California High-Speed Rail on Economic Development, Land Use Patterns, and Future Growth of Cities

Abstract

As California is in the process of building its high-speed rail (HSR) network, reviewing the experience from other established HSR networks abroad can help understand the potential economic and development impacts of HSR and the prerequisites to realize them. HSR systems involve large financial investments and infrastructure projects, which have the potential to deeply change the regions where they are deployed. However, little attention has focused on the potential of the California HSR (Figure 1) to impact economic activities and urban development. This study reviews relevant literature and analyzes case studies from HSR station-cities in France (Le Creusot, Vendôme, Le Mans, Reims), Spain (Galicia Corridor, Valladolid, Zaragoza), and Italy (Reggio Emilia) to provide insights into these topics.

research report

Parking, Working from Home, and Travel Behavior

Abstract

Drawing on the California Household Travel Survey, the research demonstrates strong associations between choosing to drive and having free parking at work or home. The research team found that the median household vehicle in California spends 22 hours a day parked and that households with parking included in the rent or purchase price of their homes are more likely to drive and less likely to use transit. The team further found that employees with free parking at work are more likely to drive for their commutes. Regressions were estimated that analyzed the decision to work from home. Largely for data reasons, these regressions are less conclusive.

published journal article

Going Nowhere Fast: Are Changing Activity Patterns Behind Falling Personal Travel?

Abstract

The inexorable rise in personal travel in the 20th century has given way to stagnation in the 21st, a phenomenon some call “peak travel.” We use 2003–2019 data from the American Time Use Survey to explore whether and why personal travel per capita has stopped growing. We show that time spent on personal travel has been dropping consistently over these years, and suggest that one important cause is likely a dramatic and ongoing decline in the time Americans spend on out-of-home activities. We find significant changes in time spent on many of the 34 activities conducted inside and outside of the home that we examine. Many of these changes appear related to advances in information and communications technology (ICT), as this period saw the quality of in-home ICT continually rising and its real cost falling, resulting in ever-improving gaming, surfing, watching, and streaming options. For example, our data suggest that out-of-home work and shopping time fell significantly during our study period, while in-home time spent on work and education rose. Game playing (presumably mostly computer games) and TV watching in the home both increased dramatically, while attendance at live entertainment, arts, and sports activities fell. Reading and writing fell substantially both inside and outside the home, perhaps replaced by electronic communication. Our findings suggest that increased in-home ICT use may have been associated with 25–30% of the reduction of out-of-home time. We also find a significant increase in sleeping and a decrease in time spent eating and drinking both inside and outside of the home. Although we deliberately chose to examine time use and travel prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, we suspect that, even as the pandemic fades, the trend toward more time at home and less time spent traveling may well increase further.

research report

The Future of Working Away from Work and Daily Travel: A Research Synthesis

Publication Date

March 3, 2023

Author(s)

Samuel Speroni, Brian D. Taylor

Abstract

This research synthesizes literature on the relationship between working from home and travel. This relationship is a pertinent one because transportation planners and policymakers have long hoped that increased remote work, sometimes called telecommuting or telework, will reduce driving, traffic congestion, and vehicle emissions. This question is especially pertinent today because working from home increased dramatically early in the COVID-19 pandemic and has remained at substantially elevated levels since then. To examine this issue, the team reviews nearly 100 research articles, reports, and some popular accounts of telecommuting and travel prior to and during the pandemic. In conducting this review, the team arrives at five principal findings. First, remote work increased dramatically with the onset of the pandemic and appears likely to remain elevated for many years to come. Second, while not everyone can work remotely, for those who have the option to do so, at least part-time, this hybrid option is extremely popular with most workers. Third, employers tend to be skeptical of the benefits of remote work, but the research does not support fears of declining productivity in the near term, and the tight post-pandemic labor market has given workers leverage to insist on remote work options. Fourth, telecommuting has long been touted as a potential solution to chronic transportation problems like traffic congestion and vehicle emissions, but the research has consistently found that it is more likely to increase, rather than decrease, overall driving among remote workers. This extra driving is due both to hybrid workers living farther from work, on average, than non-remote workers and to all remote workers making more household-serving and personal trips when they work from home. And fifth, public transit systems, in contrast to street and highway systems, have been dramatically affected by the pandemic, likely due substantially to the rise in remote work it has engendered. The future of many public transit systems, which draw an outsized share of their riders from commuters to downtowns and other major job centers, will depend on whether and to what extent those job centers re-densify with workers in the months and years ahead.

policy brief

The Future of Working Away from Work

Publication Date

March 14, 2023

Author(s)

Samuel Speroni, Brian D. Taylor, Mark Garrett

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic turned American work life outside-in. Before March 2020, nearly all workers worked outside of the home all or most of the time. In the spring of 2020, at least half worked at home as a result of stay-at-home recommendations and orders1 and enabled by advances in online video-communication technologies. Telecommuting is not new; it grew slowly in the four decades leading up to the outbreak. From 1980 the share of California’s workforce working primarily at home rose from just under 2% to 6% (see blue line in Figure 1), similar to national trends (red line). It peaked at 62% in May 2020, but was back down to 37% by the end of the year. But fully two years later the average was roughly 30%, a five-fold increase over pre-pandemic levels.2 Remote work appears here to stay.This dramatic shift has profound implications for transportation as much of the system is designed to carry morning and evening commuters into and out of downtowns and other office centers. While vehicle traffic, which plummeted in the early months of pandemic, has since rebounded, public transit ridership has yet to fully recover – with most systems stuck at about under three-quarters of pre-pandemic levels. Researchers at the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies have analyzed the extensive research literature and more recent reports on working-from-home and travel to determine how it affects travel and what a future of elevated remote work means for our transportation systems.

published journal article

Pandemic transit: Examining transit use changes and equity implications in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles

Abstract

While the COVID-19 pandemic upended many aspects of life as we knew it, its effects on U.S. public transit were especially dramatic. Many former transit commuters began to work from home or switched to traveling via private vehicles. But for those who continued to work outside the home and could not drive—who were more likely low-income and Black or Hispanic—transit remained an important means of mobility. However, most transit agencies reduced service during the first year of the pandemic, reflecting reduced ridership demand, increasing costs, and uncertain budgets. To analyze the effects of the pandemic on transit systems and their users, we examine bus ridership changes by neighborhood in Boston, Houston, and Los Angeles from 2019 to 2020. Combining aggregated stop-level boarding data, passenger surveys, and census data, we identify associations between shifting travel patterns and neighborhoods. We find that early in the pandemic, neighborhoods with more poor and non-white households lost proportionally fewer riders; however, this gap between high- and low-ridership-loss neighborhoods shrank as the pandemic wore on. We also model ridership change controlling for multiple factors. Ridership in Houston and LA generally outperformed Boston, with the built environment and demographic factors accounting for some of the observed differences. Neighborhoods with high shares of Hispanic and African American residents retained more riders in the pandemic, while those with higher levels of auto access and with more workers able to work from home lost more riders, all else equal. We conclude that transit’s social service role elevated during the pandemic, and that serving travelers in disadvantaged neighborhoods will likely remain paramount emerging from it.

policy brief

Are Accessibility Evaluation Tools Ready for Prime Time?

Abstract

In the United States, local governments typically evaluate the transportation impacts of new development based on the expected effects of the development on nearby traffic flows. These flows are most often measured in terms of “level-of-service,” or LOS, from “A” (free flow) to “F” (forced flow). If a traffic impact analysis (TIA) finds that the LOS on streets and intersections near the proposed development will degrade below a certain threshold, the project developer may be required to undertake mitigation efforts, including funding nearby transportation system improvements to lessen the projected traffic delays occasioned by the new development and/or reduce the scale of the proposal — or they may risk the project not being approved at all. LOS mitigation frequently ignores travel via modes — such as walking, biking, scooters, or public transit — other than motor vehicles. This emphasis on nearby traffic effects and motor vehicle mobility can discourage development in already built-up areas and, in doing so, ignore both the project’s regional effects on travel and traffic and the economic, social, and environmental benefits that arise from agglomerations of activities.In response, a growing number of researchers and practitioners have argued that an accessibility-focused approach would be a more conceptually complete and practical way to assess the transportation effects of new developments. Accessibility analyses consider the ease by which various destinations can be accessed by foot, bike, and public transit, as well as by car, and how proposed new developments might change this. As the number of accessibility adherents in planning research and practice has grown, there has been significant progress in the development of access evaluation measures and tools. For this research, we (1) developed a conceptual framework for accessibility analysis (Figure 1), (2) used this framework to assess the promise and pitfalls of 54 measures and tools developed to evaluate access, and (3) conducted interviews with five practitioners around the U.S. to learn about early efforts to incorporate access measurement into planning practice.