The rise of remote work since the start of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic has significantly changed urban transportation patterns in the United States, according to a new study led by MIT researchers.
The study found wide variation in the impact of remote work on vehicle miles driven and public transit ridership across the United States.
“A 1% reduction in field workers translates into approximately a 1% reduction in field workers. [automobile] Although car miles traveled decreased, public transportation ridership decreased by 2.3%,” said study co-author Yunhan Zheng SM ’21, PhD’24, an MIT postdoctoral fellow. .
“This is one of the first studies to identify a causal effect of remote work on vehicle miles traveled and transit ridership across the United States,” said MIT professor and co-author of the paper. Jinhua Zhao added.
Scholars have demonstrated the impact of telecommuting on large-scale mobility patterns across the lower 48 states and the District of Columbia, as well as 217 metropolitan areas, accounting for many of the nuances of this issue. I believe I have reached a conclusion.
The paper, “The Impact of Remote Work on Vehicle Mileage and Transit Ridership in the United States,” was published today in the journal natural city. The author is Zheng, a MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering doctoral graduate and a postdoctoral fellow at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART). Shenhao Wang PhD '20, Assistant Professor at the University of Florida. Lun Liu, assistant professor at Peking University. Jim Aloisi, Lecturer at MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Zhao is a professor of cities and transportation, founder of the MIT Mobility Initiative, and director of MIT's JTL Urban Mobility Lab and Transit Lab.
Researchers looked at the prevalence of remote work from multiple sources, including location data from Google, travel data from the Federal Highway Administration and the National Transportation Database, and the U.S. Monthly Work Structure and Attitudes Survey (conducted in collaboration with Stanford University). We have collected data regarding. University of Chicago, ITAM, MIT).
The study found wide variation across U.S. states in how much the increase in remote work has affected mileage driven.
“The impact of a 1% change in remote work in New York state on vehicle mileage reduction is only about a quarter of that in Texas,” Zheng observed. “There’s a real change there.”
At the same time, remote work has had the biggest impact on public transit revenues in places where the systems are widely used, with New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, and Philadelphia among the hardest-hit cities. It ranks among the top five metropolitan areas.
The overall impact has been surprisingly consistent over time, from early 2020 to late 2022.
“In terms of temporal variation, we found that the effect was very consistent across the study period,” Zheng said. “This is not only important in the early stages of the pandemic, when remote work was necessary for many people. This scale is consistent even into the later stages, when many people have the flexibility to choose where they want to work. We believe this could have long-term implications.”
The study also estimates the impact of more remote workers on the environment and public transportation.
“On a national basis, we estimate that a 10 percent reduction in the number of frontline workers compared to pre-pandemic levels would reduce total annual vehicle-related CO2 emissions by 191.8 million tonnes,” Wang said. says.
The study also found that across the 217 metropolitan areas surveyed, a 10 percent reduction in the number of frontline workers compared to pre-pandemic levels would result in 2.4 billion annual transit trips and $3.7 billion in savings. is expected to result in a loss of fare revenue. It accounted for approximately 27% of the annual number of transit users and fare revenue in 2019.
“The significant impact that remote working will have on transit users is that transit agencies will be able to adapt their services accordingly, investing in services tailored to non-commuting travel, and introducing more flexible schedules to accommodate new demand patterns. It highlights the need to respond well,” Zhao said.
This research was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative. Barr Foundation. National Research Foundation, Office of the Prime Minister of Singapore, under the Campus for Research Excellence and Technology Enterprise Programme. Research Opportunity Seed Fund 2023 from the University of Florida. and Beijing Social Science Foundation.
