COVID & telecommuting-induced changes in individual activity and travel patterns: Evidence from the Puget Sound Region

Abstract

One enduring effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the popularity of telecommuting: To this day, 23% of the salaried workers continue to work from home, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Using three waves of the household travel survey data from 2017, 2019 and 2021 in the Puget Sound Region, WA, this study examines how telecommuting, which also means the removal of the workplace as an anchor point from one’s daily activity and travel pattern, affects the generation and rescheduling of maintenance and discretionary trips that are previously conducted around home and workplaces. The associated consequences including changes in modes of transportation used and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) are also investigated. We found that though telecommuting resulted in reduced number of trips and VMT in general, there is a significant increase in the number of maintenance and discretionary trips. Additionally, telecommuters exhibited less complex trip chaining behavior, characterized by simpler tours with shorter trips, fewer stops, and lower mode diversity compared to non-telecommuters. Spatially, telecommuters conducted maintenance and discretionary trips closer to home; temporally, and the departure times of these trips are more spread out with emerging peaks such as late morning, and mid-day. These results have significant policy and modeling implications relating to transportation service provision, local economy, and travel demand forecasting models.