Scottish Government

5.0 Travel Behaviour and E-working

5.1 Against the background of the development of ICT and e-working described in Chapters 2 to 4, there has also been research on the impact of evolving communications technology on travel behaviour and social change. This provides an extensive theoretical but limited empirical basis for this review, so this chapter reviews the relevant theory on:

5.2 It then reviews the empirical findings on:

Factors affecting travel demand

5.3 In order to understand the role of ICT on travel demand, a broad approach is needed. Rather than simply predicting the demand for travel, transport planners need to recognise that travellers modify their behaviour to take account of the opportunities available to them. The availability of opportunities determines behaviour. If an opportunity is available which does not involve travel then people may travel less. If more opportunities become available and people can do more things then they may travel more. These laws of supply and demand underpin economic theory, but since travel is derived from wider economic and social needs, travel demand markets need to consider three dimensions to travel behaviour (Mohktarian and Salomon 2001):

5.4 Travel demand is derived from the economic and social needs of individuals and businesses. In order to assess how much travel there will be, it is first necessary to understand in sufficient detail the economic and social activities of the relevant population ( SACTRA 1994, DfT 2001).

5.5 If journeys to work are being replaced by telecommuting; trips to the high street are being replaced by online shopping; and business travel is being reduced by the use of teleconferencing, this substitution will replace travel demand. The reality is that there is a complex matrix of second-order effects, which will in many cases reduce or negate the traffic reduction effects to be expected from the simple substitution of real journeys for virtual activities (Cairns et al 2004). To understand the net impact of all these factors requires a detailed lifecycle assessment, and the aggregation of measured values for four different major kinds of impact (James 2004, Mokhtarian 1990):

Substitution

Complementarity

5.6 Within these broad categories some of the specific questions that need to be answered include (Lake 2004):

5.7 A more detailed discussion of the mechanisms associated with each of these effects is provided in Appendix C under the headings of: commuting, other work related travel, recreational travel, impacts on other household members, and mode and time shift. The extensive literature summarised in the Appendix shows that for each trip purpose and people group there are mechanisms to increase travel demand, and mechanisms to reduce demand. It suggests that the mechanisms are important for accurate travel demand estimation, but that it is difficult to generalise about which mechanisms are most important in which situations.

Policies and tools for travel demand management

Transport and planning policy

5.8 Although travel demand is derived from wider economic and social needs there are many ways that demand can be influenced by public policy. The adoption of e-working and its impacts, needs to be viewed within the context of the prevailing, and changing, policy and legislative framework.

5.9 E-working increases flexibility for people and businesses, increasing the scale of the responses shown in Table 5.1 for the main policy interventions used to influence travel demand (summarised from Scottish Executive 2003, Cairns et al 2004). E-working can therefore have both positive and negative impacts on travel demand dependent on the parallel complementary hard and smart measures being implemented.

Table 5.1 - Policy measures and demand management impacts

Environmental policy

5.10 An influential factor in putting telework on the political agenda has been to promote it as a means for reducing greenhouse gases and nox emissions. The jump from assumptions about potential trip substitution to environmental impact without looking at the impacts on travel demand more explicitly, is common within policy due to presentational needs of organisations to "greenwash" their activities (Rye 2000).

5.11 More rigorous treatment of the relationships between environmental factors and transport policy show that a broad approach is needed which looks at both positive and negative responses (Goodwin 1997, SACTRA 1999). Narrow assumptions such "buses good/cars bad", or building roads to boost economic development, or in this case e-working improves the environment therefore have little to add to the evidence base.

5.12 The importance of environmental policy is that it is underpinned by a national and international policy and legislative framework that incentivises action on travel demand management measures such as e-working.

Employer policy

5.13 The importance of changes in the policies of human resource departments has already been identified as an important influence on the take up of e-working. Employment policy is also an important influence on mode choice with recent research in Glasgow (Scottish Executive 2003) showing that workplace and employment related conditions were the single most important factors restricting public transport mode choices for their journey to work accounting for 43% of those surveyed.

5.14 If people can only e-work if their employer lets them, and can only use public transport if they employment conditions allow this, then it follows that that management and administrative factors are amongst the most important influences on whether ICT and e-work will affect travel demand and traffic levels.

5.15 In many cases, more flexible employment conditions appear attractive to employers when they are promoting business relocation decisions. For example BBC Scotland decided to relocate all but a core news staff from Edinburgh to Glasgow. Many of the Edinburgh based staff did not wish to relocate their families to Glasgow and consequently retained their homes in Edinburgh and adopted e-working (bbc.co.uk). Other research shows that over time it can be expected that people will move house or job so short and long term impacts may be different.

5.16 Greater employment flexibility therefore can be associated with encouraging longer journeys to work and needs to be viewed alongside the relatively low commuting times currently observed in Scotland. There is therefore potential for ICT and e-working to stimulate significant increases in travel.

5.17 This is a poorly researched topic and requires longitudinal studies of employers in a range of sectors and locations. It is also highly topical with moves planned for the National Transport Agency in Scotland and Scottish Natural Heritage.

Land use policy and impacts

5.18 If people optimise their behaviour to take account of the opportunities open to them, and travel demand management seeks to limit increases in travel demand, then land use policy is perhaps the most important long term regulatory mechanism of government to control what activities take place ( ECOTEC 1993).

5.19 Although surveys of teleworkers show a fall in trip numbers, large rises in longer distance trips are observed ( TNO 2004, Cairns et al 2004). Therefore if e-working is encouraging more dispersed patterns of activity, then it follows that in the long term there could be substantial travel demand induced. National planning policy seeks to limit ( NPPG17/ SPG17) this with development planning and control seeking to reduce travel demand by improving opportunities for access to employment and other services. If e-working creates pressure for the development of extended suburbs (sometimes called exurbia), and this is not controlled by the development planning process then the travel demand implications could be substantial.

5.20 Given the current economic geography of Scotland it seems unlikely that planning policy will oppose housing development in for example rural Ayrshire, due to the needs for regeneration, or remote parts of the Highlands where population has been declining. The land use planning function will therefore be more likely to take advantage of the economic development benefits of e-working than the potential travel demand reduction benefits.

5.21 What seems clear is that whether it is driven primarily by e-working and ICT, or simply increased wealth and changes in social patterns, increasingly dispersed living has profound implications for travel demand, the spatial organisation of society, and the environment ( DHC 2005).

Magnitude of the effects

5.22 There is a large and conflicting evidence base on the magnitude of the interacting competing effects. This is not surprising and echoes more general findings on smart measures that the impact can be very large or very small depending on the extent to which e-working changes are supported locally by policies and parallel initiatives.

5.23 To achieve robust estimates of travel demand changes from e-working, it is necessary to look at all trip purposes, not just those related to work. In paragraph 0 it was noted that it is also necessary to look at the effect of telework adoption on people around the teleworker, including family members, local shops, recreational sites, postal services, and colleagues who remain in the work place.

5.24 Since the available research does not look comprehensively at these issues and is limited in other important ways, as discussed below from paragraph 0 to 0, there are major limitations on the scope for robust conclusions to be made about the magnitude of the effects. However, the research does help to scale the impacts by identifying from case studies how particular companies and groups of people have been affected by e-working and ICT.

5.25 Table 5.2 shows that the net mileage reductions vary from between 1243 to 8878 miles per annum, and Table 5.3 shows direct substitution effects of between 720 and 9000 miles per annum. If it is assumed that these reductions can be set against the average mileage travelled by Scottish residents from the Scottish Household Survey of about 6970miles (averaging 2000 to 2003 figures) then it is clear that very large proportional reductions may be being indicated.

5.26 If it is assumed that on any day 15% of the population in Scotland could telework (the upper bound from Chapter 4) and each of these could reduce their travel by 5000 miles (a rough average of the above reductions) then an upper bound estimate of travel demand reduction from teleworking would be 11%.

5.27 Table 5.3 provides a summary of the 30 case studies in 5 countries carried out as part of the Sustel project (Sustel 2004). This provides figures for average commuting savings, additional journeys undertaken and net rebound effects.

Table 5.2 Summary of Case study findings for Teleworking

Table 5.3 Case study findings for Teleworking

Table 5.4 - Summary of 30 Case Studies in five Countries

5.28 Before accepting at face value the very positive messages about traffic reduction in Tables 5.2 to 5.4 it is necessary to question carefully the assumptions and methods:

5.29 It is also interesting to note from this review that the type of organisation undertaking the studies appears to have an influence over the outcome with:

5.30 A major obscuring factor, making longitudinal research difficult, is that both ICT uptake and car usage are increasing in parallel as a result of an expanding economy and improvements in technology ( STELLA 2004), so it is very hard to unpick from this how much the two interact with each other.

5.31 Although there may be doubt about the precise impacts on traffic levels, there is however a broad consensus that the promotion of ICT and e-working is a good thing. The improvements in accessibility and choice, and the flexibility offered through new networking opportunities, mean that successful e-working solutions are consistent with sustainable transport and development agendas.

Relevance to Scotland

5.32 Although several of the studies in Table 5.2 include samples within Scotland, the results have not been presented in a way which allows disaggregation to particular places. There is however some evidence that ICT and e-working may have a greater impact on Scotland due to:

5.33 Further research is needed to project the current knowledge about travel impacts of ICT and e-working to fit the context of Scotland's changing geography and demography. Scotland is to be one of the first countries in the world with 100% broadband coverage, and e-working may well present greater opportunities than for other countries. There are therefore likely to be greater positive and negative impacts on travel demand. Further work will however be needed to assess the balance between substituted and induced travel effects in different contexts to identify whether this will lead to net increases or decreases in travel.

Traffic levels

5.34 If messages about the impacts on overall travel demand impacts are complex then much greater clarity can be achieved by unpicking the components that could lead to traffic reduction.

5.35 The research is very clear. The increased flexibility and availability of information provided by ICT and e-working allows people to improve efficiency and this includes avoiding congested sections of roads at peak times of day (James 2004, Cairns 2004). An unaltered (or even slightly increased) burden of traffic distributed more evenly across the day can make very substantial reductions in congestion. There is currently no generally agreed definition of congestion but most approaches relate to the avoidance of delays and the reliability of journey times ( NAO 2004). The difference between peak and off peak journey times and the reliability of trips at all times of day can be improved if travellers:

5.36 Flexibility and choice are stronger attributes for car travel than they are for public transport (Stradling 2001). It is therefore not surprising that there is a consistent finding that e-working impacts more upon reducing public transport use than car use (Lyons 2002). It also appears to allow people to switch mode and use their car at an uncongested time of day.

5.37 E-working is therefore no different from any other demand management intervention with both "push" and "pull" interventions being needed to achieve desired aims. Without "push" measures such as road capacity reduction or road pricing, increased flexibility for users allows them to fill up spare capacity on the road network throughout the day (Gillespie et al and Salomon, Lake 2004).

Summary of travel behaviour impacts

5.38 Overall the conclusion of this analysis is that the flexibility offered by new e-opportunities allows public agencies to secure social and environmental benefits for communities through travel demand reduction measures, but also allows individuals and businesses to travel more. To secure the potential travel demand reduction effects, there would need to be a significant increase in complementary measures to manage travel demand.

5.39 Figure 5.1 shows the main mechanisms for change.

Figure 5.1 - ICT and e-work influences on travel demand

5.40 The potential traffic reduction benefits are significant. E-working can help to uncouple long term relationships between economic activity and travel demand. Based on the international evidence and case studies, a managed approach could achieve travel demand reductions of up to 11% in the Scottish context. Much greater reductions in congestion are also possible by making better use of exiting capacity.

5.41 To achieve this level of traffic reduction and congestion relief would require a step change increase in activity on travel demand management policies involving:

5.42 However even if the travel demand increases exceed the efficiency benefits, there remains a broad consensus that the promotion of ICT and e-working is a good thing, with improvements in accessibility and choice being generally consistent with sustainable transport and development agendas.