Analysis of telecommuting behavior and impacts on travel demand and the environment. Shabanpour, R., Golshani, N., Tayarani, M., Auld, J., & Mohammadian, A. (. Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment, 62:563–576, July, 2018.
Analysis of telecommuting behavior and impacts on travel demand and the environment [link]Paper  doi  abstract   bibtex   
The discussion of whether, and to what extent, telecommuting can curb congestion in urban areas has spanned more than three decades. This study develops an integrated framework to provide the empirical evidence of the potential impacts of home-based telecommuting on travel behavior, network congestion, and air quality. In the first step, we estimate a telecommuting adoption model using a zero-inflated hierarchical ordered probit model to determine the factors associated with workers’ propensity to adopt telecommuting. Second, we implement the estimated model in the POLARIS activity-based framework to simulate the potential changes in workers’ activity-travel patterns and network congestion. Third, the MOVES mobile source emission simulator and Autonomie vehicle energy simulator are used to estimate the potential changes in vehicular emissions and fuel use in the network as a result of this policy. Different policy adoption scenarios are then tested in the proposed integrated platform. We found that compared to the current baseline situation where almost 12% of workers in Chicago region have flexible working time schedule, in the case when 50% of workers have flexible working time, telecommuting can reduce total daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT) up to 0.69% and 2.09%, respectively. Considering the same comparison settings, this policy has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions by up to 0.71% and 1.14%, respectively. In summary, our results endorse the fact that telecommuting policy has the potential to reduce network congestion and vehicular emissions specifically during rush hours.
@article{shabanpour_analysis_2018,
	title = {Analysis of telecommuting behavior and impacts on travel demand and the environment},
	volume = {62},
	issn = {1361-9209},
	url = {https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920918301226},
	doi = {10.1016/j.trd.2018.04.003},
	abstract = {The discussion of whether, and to what extent, telecommuting can curb congestion in urban areas has spanned more than three decades. This study develops an integrated framework to provide the empirical evidence of the potential impacts of home-based telecommuting on travel behavior, network congestion, and air quality. In the first step, we estimate a telecommuting adoption model using a zero-inflated hierarchical ordered probit model to determine the factors associated with workers’ propensity to adopt telecommuting. Second, we implement the estimated model in the POLARIS activity-based framework to simulate the potential changes in workers’ activity-travel patterns and network congestion. Third, the MOVES mobile source emission simulator and Autonomie vehicle energy simulator are used to estimate the potential changes in vehicular emissions and fuel use in the network as a result of this policy. Different policy adoption scenarios are then tested in the proposed integrated platform. We found that compared to the current baseline situation where almost 12\% of workers in Chicago region have flexible working time schedule, in the case when 50\% of workers have flexible working time, telecommuting can reduce total daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT) up to 0.69\% and 2.09\%, respectively. Considering the same comparison settings, this policy has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions by up to 0.71\% and 1.14\%, respectively. In summary, our results endorse the fact that telecommuting policy has the potential to reduce network congestion and vehicular emissions specifically during rush hours.},
	urldate = {2025-09-03},
	journal = {Transportation Research Part D: Transport and Environment},
	author = {Shabanpour, Ramin and Golshani, Nima and Tayarani, Mohammad and Auld, Joshua and Mohammadian, Abolfazl (Kouros)},
	month = jul,
	year = {2018},
	keywords = {Activity-based model, Emissions, In-home activity, Out-of-home activity, Telecommuting, Zero-inflated hierarchical ordered probit},
	pages = {563--576},
}

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