Worker Telecommunication and Mobility in Transition: Consequences for Planning

Abstract

Although planners have been interested in work-related telecommunication and mobility arrangements chiefly as means of transportation demand management, even telecommuting, the most promising in this regard, seems to have limited longrun potential to reduce congestion. However, such work arrangements do affect workers’ travel needs and thus themix of travelers, destinations, and trip purposes, as well as equitable access to housing, jobs, and amenities. They are also likely to further disperse residences in the long run, with consequences for both land use and transportation, except where counterbalanced by workers’ rising time values and/or increased uncertainty about future travel destinations or times. Thus, the authors recommend that academic researchers and metropolitan planning organizations cooperate to identify effects of telecommunication-and mobility-enabled work arrangements on travel and location behavior in the long run and at the detailed scale necessary for truly forward-looking planning.