Connecting Telework, Travel Behavior, and System Performance During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

November 16, 2022 - June 30, 2024

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic and the imposed social distancing measures led many workers to adopt telecommuting—working from home—arrangements on a large scale. The massive changes in work activity may have long-term impacts on domestic and travel behavior, including how people organize their work, where that work is performed, how activities and travel are scheduled, and what travel mode is used. Telework has been touted as a potentially effective travel demand management strategy as well as an environmental management tool for reducing travel and greenhouse gas emissions under Senate Bill 375. The COVID-19 pandemic and associated travel restrictions, despite creating immense disruption to people’s lives, also offered an opportunity to experience how telework policies and practices can affect daily travel, should it remain a significant part of the work landscape.

This study considers how telecommuters have responded to the changes in activity-travel scheduling and time allocation. In particular, it considers how workers utilized time during the pandemic by comparing workers who telecommuted with workers who continued to commute. Commuters were segmented into those who worked in telecommutable jobs (potential telecommuters) and those who did not (commuters). Findings from this work suggest that telecommuters exhibited distinct activity participation and time use patterns from the commuter groups. This study also supports the basic hypothesis that telecommuters were more engaged with in-home versus out-of-home activity compared to potential telecommuters and commuters. In terms of activity time-use, telecommuters spent less time on work activity but more time on caring for household members, household chores, eating, socializing and recreation activities than their counterparts. During weekdays, a majority of telecommuters did not travel and in general this group made fewer trips per day compared to the other two groups. Compared to telecommuters, potential telecommuters made more trips on both weekdays and weekends while non-telecommutable workers made more trips only on weekdays. The findings of this study provide initial insights on time-use and the associated activity-travel behavior of both telecommuter and commuter groups during the pandemic.

Teleworking, Travel, and Quality of Life Before, During, and After the Pandemic Across Different Population Groups in the U.S.

Status

Complete

Project Timeline

October 1, 2022 - June 30, 2024

Principal Investigator

Project Team

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Summary

The COVID-19 pandemic and the imposed social distancing measures led many people to adopt telecommuting arrangements — working from home or teleworking — on a large scale. A recent survey found that, between February and May 2020, over one-third of the American labor force swapped in-person work with telework, which increased the share of remote working to nearly 50 percent of the nation’s workforce. These massive changes in work arrangements may have long-term impacts, including how work is organized, where work is performed, and how activities and travel are scheduled. If telecommuting continues it is important to know whether it results in less travel, less commute stress, and consequently a happier life.

This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on telecommuting (working from home) and travel during the first year of the pandemic in the United States (from March 2020 to March 2021), with a particular focus on examining the variation in impact across different geographies. The 50 U.S. states are divided into several clusters based on their geographic and telecommuting characteristics, including 6 small urban states, 8 large urban states, 18 urban–rural mixed states, and 17 rural states. Combining data from multiple sources, this study finds that nearly one-third of the U.S. workforce worked from home during the pandemic, which was six times higher than the pre-pandemic period, and that these fractions varied across the clusters. More people worked from home in urban states compared with rural states. As well as telecommuting, several activity travel trends were also examined across these clusters: reduction in the number of activity visits; changes in the number of trips and vehicle-miles traveled; and mode usage. Findings show there was a greater reduction in the number of workplace and nonworkplace visits in urban states compared with rural states. The number of trips in all distance categories decreased except for long-distance trips, which increased during the summer and fall of 2020. The changes in overall mode usage frequency were similar across urban and rural states with a large drop in ride-hailing and transit use.

Investigating Opportunities to Mobilize Community Associations to Promote Sustainable Transportation and Land Use

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

September 25, 2023 - January 31, 2025

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Urban Planning and Public Policy

Project Summary

In recent decades, common-interest housing developments have become prevalent in many American cities. According to the Community Associations Institute’s 2021 estimates, nearly 30% of the U.S. population now lives in a development or area governed by a community association, with homeowners associations being the most common type. Despite the widespread presence of homeowners associations (HOAs), there has been limited research on how they impact the adoption of new mobility technologies, innovative urban neighborhood designs, and sustainable land use and transportation initiatives. HOAs and similar community governing bodies have the authority to impose additional restrictions on community activities, which has often led to them being perceived as obstacles to achieving a more environmentally friendly and inclusive future. While this perception is grounded in reality, it doesn’t fully account for the significant variation in how HOAs operate. This perspective also hinders innovative thinking about how HOAs could contribute to creating more sustainable communities. Exploring ways to engage these influential entities in pursuing various planning objectives is crucial.

This project will improve the collective understanding of how HOAs and other community associations impact sustainable land use and transportation. The researchers will achieve this by: i) creating an integrated geospatial database that includes information about HOAs, land uses (including Accessory Dwelling Units, or ADUs), and transportation indicators, ii) investigating the relationship between the presence or absence of HOAs and factors such as ADU construction, travel patterns, and the built environment, and iii) identifying best practices and extracting lessons from successful cases.

Drayage Truck Activity and California Inland Ports

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

October 1, 2022 - March 31, 2025

Principal Investigator

Project Team

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Summary

The ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland are the top, second and eighth busiest container ports in the United States. However, the highway networks surrounding these ports are highly congested due to drayage truck operations. Since warehouse space at the ports for transferring cargo to delivery trucks is limited, drayage trips must traverse metropolitan areas to reach scattered distribution centers. This creates significant traffic congestion and amplifies other problems like noise and air pollution in communities located nearby. While locating additional distribution centers near the ports may alleviate dock storage constraints and minimize negative impacts on local streets and communities, available land for development is scarce and prohibitively expensive. Inland “dry ports” operate as intermodal distribution facilities for loading and unloading standardized shipping containers transferred from docked ships via major highways or railroads. They can be located away from population centers to minimize their impacts on local communities and road networks, and therefore can address the traffic and community impacts of drayage truck activity. However, additional data on portside freight activities are needed to assess their potential benefits. Existing truck activity data collected by onboard telematics systems provide a picture of drayage truck trip activity but are limited and typically deployed on larger fleets and thus may not provide an accurate representation of overall drayage activity. Alternative data sources like UC Irvine’s Truck Activity Monitoring System (TAMS) show potential. It captures truck classification data from inductive loop sensors located throughout Southern California and can identify drayage trucks. However, it requires further enhancement to accurately measure drayage truck volumes along highway corridors. This study will provide a better understanding of the impacts associated with developing an inland port serving the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. The team will perform a comprehensive review of studies associated with inland ports within the United States and the rest of the world. This review will provide insights on factors affecting the implementation, design, and operation of inland ports, and assess the benefits and costs of developing inland ports to serve California’s major ports. As telematics data sources represent only a small sample of drayage truck activity, the next step is to enhance the ability to measure the impacts of current drayage truck activities on the metropolitan road network. TAMS coverage is being expanded in the Inland Empire with additional site deployments through a concurrent study. This study will improve the accuracy of the truck classification model and yield a significant dataset of drayage truck activity in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and the Inland Empire to assess the potential impact of inland ports on highway congestion.

Categorizing and Prioritizing Trip Types to Support California’s VMT Reduction Goals

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

October 27, 2022 - April 30, 2025

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering, Transportation Science Interdisciplinary Graduate Degree Program

Project Summary

Vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is a well-accepted measure of the amount of travel taking place on a transportation system and thus, that system’s climate impacts and sustainability characteristics. California Senate Bill (SB) 375 establishes a process for setting regional-level targets to reduce VMT, which necessitates incorporating VMT-based analysis into transportation planning and modeling in practice. The issue is whether VMT needs to be further classified into “types of VMT” that can be incorporated into the process to provide more sensitive policy analysis. Trips differ in both their purpose and in the mode or vehicle used, and consequently, VMT can be viewed as better or worse for economic productivity and sustainability based on these characteristics. For example, some car trips can be accomplished with web-based devices. Little research has pursued this notion for policy-making purposes. Using available data on trip purposes, and on vehicle mixes (in terms of fuel usage and environmental impact) used for trips, productivity-based indices can be developed to properly assess the environmental/energy impacts of the VMT associated with broad classes of trips.

This project utilizes various data sources and an existing transportation system planning and analysis model (for a selected case study network) to develop methods for identifying and prioritizing potential VMT categories. Researchers will then use this information to evaluate the impact of different policies. This initial study will also serve as a trial for larger studies to evaluate system-wide policy implications. VMT category-based pricing, subsidy, taxation and land-use policies can be tested in selected network case studies. One simple example would be taxing VMT from electric vehicles less than gasoline powered vehicles.

Finding Community-based Solutions to Mobility Barriers Faced by Families in Semi-rural Antelope Valley, California

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

October 1, 2024 - September 30, 2025

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Summary

Located in semi-rural Antelope Valley, California, Ohana Center is a non-profit community center that provides resources and support to families in need. The mobility challenges experienced by these families include unreliable and sparse public transit, financial burdens, time demands, and lack of social support. These barriers may contribute to further social isolation, lower likelihood of participating in family leisure activities, and missing prenatal, maternal, and pediatric healthcare appointments. To address these challenges, Ohana Center has included mobility incentives, like providing gas vouchers. While these community-led solutions may facilitate care-related trips for families in need, they are currently short-term solutions.

In partnership with the Ohana Center, this research project will conduct a series of four online community listening sessions with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) mothers who utilize Ohana Center services to learn more about their challenges related to completing care-related trips, their experiences with various community-led mobility initiatives, and their hopes for new public mobility services and programs in Antelope Valley. Transcripts from these sessions will be analyzed to identify themes and community-expressed needs. Findings will be interpreted in partnership with the Ohana Center to inform future mobility initiatives and solutions.

Analyzing the Effectiveness of Efforts to Reconnect Communities and Redress Past Harms in California

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

January 13, 2025 - January 12, 2026

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Urban Planning and Public Policy

Project Summary

The federal government and California have adopted policies, developed programs, and allocated funds to redress the past and contemporary harms caused by transportation infrastructure development. They are committed to directing a significant portion of the benefits to disadvantaged communities. These efforts fall under the rubric of “reconnecting communities,” which aims to remedy past and ongoing injustice through new infrastructure. Equally important is the goal of meaningful stakeholder engagement, which requires rectifying biased participatory practices.

This project aims to improve restorative justice (RJ) practices in transportation and infrastructure planning by evaluating the effectiveness of programs to redress harm caused by transportation infrastructures. The project team will use spatial analysis and a survey of several dozen Reconnecting Communities (RC) projects to identify those harmed and assess engagement practices used. The team will conduct six RC case studies throughout California to examine historical and contemporary infrastructure decision-making. Finally, the team will conduct a deep process study of advisory board decision-making processes in the Bay Area to understand types of government-led RJ engagement that can truly repair harms.

Understanding Post-Pandemic Travel Behavior Patterns and Trends in California

Status

In Progress

Project Timeline

October 1, 2024 - September 30, 2025

Principal Investigator

Department(s)

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Project Summary

COVID-19 has reshaped people’s mobility patterns worldwide (Arellana et al., 2020; Hensher et al., 2021; Orro et al., 2020; Park, 2020), including in the US (Brough et al., 2021; Ehsani et al., 2021; Hu and Chen, 2021; Kim and Kwan, 2021; Liu et al., 2020). Public transit and transportation network companies (TNCs) were hit particularly hard (Du and Rakha, 2020; Khatun and Saphores, 2023). For example, San Francisco experienced a staggering 94% drop in transit ridership during the lockdown (Toussaint, 2020), and an 87% drop in Uber trips in April-May 2020 compared to early 2020 (Brown and Williams, 2023). 

Many public policies that aim to reduce solo driving, congestion, and vehicle emissions, and increase walking, biking, and shared mobility are based on pre-pandemic travel behaviors. However, higher levels of working from home, streaming, e-shopping, and micro-mobility options post-pandemic have changed travel behavior. How does post-pandemic household travel patterns differ from their pre-pandemic values? Do the policies and plans that aim to advance California’s mobility, environmental, and equity goals warrant review and possible amendment? The purpose of this project is to answer these questions and to analyze the potential impacts of changes in household travel on the California Transportation Plan 2050.

working paper

Seamless Travel: Measuring Bicycle and Pedestrian Activity in San Diego County and its Relationship to Land Use, Transportation, Safety, and Facility Type

Abstract

This paper provides the data collection and research results for the Seamless Travel project. The Seamless Travel Project is a research project funded by Caltrans and managed by the University of California Traffic Safety Center, with David Ragland, PhD., as the Principal Investigator and Michael Jones as the Project Manager. The project is funded by Caltrans Division of Innovation and Research and is being conducted by the Traffic Safety Center of University of California Berkeley and Alta Planning + Design.

Measuring bicycle and pedestrian activity is a key element to achieving the goals of the California Blueprint for Bicycling and Walking (the Blueprint). Meeting these goals, which include a 50% increase in bicycling and walking and a 50% decrease in bicycle and pedestrian fatality rates by 2010, and increases in funding for both programs, will require a quantifiable and defensible base of knowledge. This research helps meet two of the Blueprint’s major strategic objectives: (1) collecting data on volumes and facilities, and (2) determining the most cost-effective methods of estimating bicycle and pedestrian collision rates.