Impact of telecommuting policies on urban spatial structure and the environment: Home-based and center-based telecommuting

Traffic congestion and air pollution are among the most serious problems facing large cities throughout the world. Telecommuting has become one of the most promising travel demand management strategies to cope with this situation. Telecommuting is often proposed as a way to decrease traffic congestion, energy consumption, and air pollution by reducing commuting travel. The objective of this study is to analyze the impacts of different telecommuting policies on urban spatial structure and the environment. Two forms of telecommuting are considered: home-based telecommuting (HBT) and center-based telecommuting (CBT). To do this we develop an urban land-use model that incorporates an HBT program and a CBT program. Several major issues are examined in this study: (1) the allocation of time by workers on telecommuting and office work, (2) the resulting urban spatial structure (focusing on city size), (3) utility of households, and (4) air pollution levels (such as annual gross emissions, annual point-wise emissions, and daily emissions in the worst possible situation). We obtain interesting results from this study. The most striking result is that annual gross emissions increase when either telecommuting program is available. The increase in gross emissions is primarily related to the large expansion of a city when a telecommuting program is available. However a substantial amount of emissions can be reduced around the central business district (CBD), while emissions increase moderately in the suburbs for both HBT and CBT. In addition, a significant portion of daily emissions can be reduced as fewer workers commute to the CBD (i.e., more workers telecommute) in the worst scenario under either telecommuting program. Utility of households increases when either an HBT or a CBT program is available. On the other hand, a city expands when either telecommuting option is available so as to increase air pollution levels. We conclude that the promotion of either or both HBT and CBT constitutes good transportation and urban policy if a city\u27s government appropriately manages the city to prevent it from expanding too much