Telecommuting and Residential Location: Relationships with Commute Distance Traveled for State of California Workers

The joint impact of telecommuting, residential location and job location on transportation is examined. An important objective of telecommuting as a transportation demand management strategy is to reduce overall vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Theoretically, telecommuting might seem likely to contribute to sprawl if workers were able to move further away from their jobs. In either case, decisions to telecommute are regulated by people’s desire to keep their person-miles traveled (PMT) at what they consider to be acceptable levels. The data is based on a self-administered survey distributed in 1998 to employees of six California state agencies that have telecommuting programs. While telecommuters on average live farther away from their workplace, their mean commute PMT and VMT are lower than for non-telecommuters.

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