Research on the Benefits and Limitations of Telecommuting to Inform a New Transportation Normal

A post by the Transportation Research Board gathers recent and historic studies on the effects of telecommuting for indications about how the post-COVID world might change if the shift toward working from home stick around for months, years, or indefinitely into the future. But telecommuting creates problems of its own, and research conducted to date, admittedly conducted in conditions short of the kind of wholesale changes inspired by the pandemic, hasn't shown telecommuting to be the kind of slam dunk many might hope it to be.

For instance, research from the 1990s made the case for telecommuting as "an ideal way to mitigate traffic congestion and improve air quality." But another study, completed 20 years later, "showed that regular teleworkers used time and money saved to either take trips they couldn’t during a normal work commute or move farther from the offices they were visiting less frequently."

Then there are the funding problems created when transportation revenues are tied to gas taxes. "Before much of the white-collar workforce began teleworking in mid-to-late March, the Congressional Budget Office had already estimated the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2021 and the Highway Account by 2022. States have been thinking outside the pump in terms of how their transportation revenue can be maintained."