Project Summary
This project at ITS-Irvine is a sub-contract to Cal State Dominguez Hills.
California Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) may incorporate telecommuting and remote services such as e-learning, e-commerce, and telehealth in their sustainable communities strategies (SCS) to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, while use and study of these strategies increased significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic, their impacts on travel behavior and patterns, GHG emissions, and land use are complex, dynamic, and yet to be fully determined. Transportation usage declined significantly during initial lockdowns, clearing freeways and cleaning the air as telecommuting and remote service usage increased. As public health restrictions softened and households and organizations returned to a new normal, telecommuting and remote service use remained higher than pre-pandemic levels; however, VMT and emissions levels have returned, and public transit has remained low. This raises critical questions about the transportation, land use, and emissions impacts of telecommuting and remote services that this study will examine using a publicly-available transportation (U.S. Census, National Household Travel Survey, Google Mobility) and time-use data (American Time Use Survey), commercial transportation data purchased from Replica, ecommerce data from California Department of Tax and Fee Administration, survey instruments administered through IPSOS to capture travel behavior and patterns across MPOs, and survey instruments distributed to MPOs regarding SCS and California organizations regarding telecommuting policy.