Remote working could reduce carbon emissions from car travel by hundreds of millions of tons, but at the cost of billions of dollars in lost revenue for public transit, according to a new study.
Researchers from the University of Florida, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Peking University use the latest data on remote work and transportation behavior since the pandemic changed work arrangements to find out how cities can improve sustainability by promoting remote work. It revealed how the goal could be achieved.
Researchers found that a 10% increase in remote workers could lead to fewer car trips and a 10% reduction in carbon emissions from the transportation sector, resulting in approximately 200 million tons of carbon dioxide annually across the United States. It was discovered that there is a possibility of decreasing However, with the same proportion of remote work, transit fare revenues would drop by $3.7 billion nationwide, a whopping 27% drop.
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According to various studies, around 14% of employees work exclusively from home, but as many as half of all employees may be working remotely at least part of the time.
“Transportation needs to be very concerned,” said Dr. Shenhao Wang, a University of California urban planning professor who oversaw the new study. “Still, overall, we would expect less car travel and less energy consumption. The situation is therefore very complex, and whether the impact is positive or negative depends on the parties involved. .”
Urban planners have long considered remote work as a way to reduce traffic congestion and carbon emissions. However, before the COVID-19 pandemic, few employees worked from home, making it difficult to analyze the impact of remote work. The rapid increase and continued investment in remote work caused by the pandemic has finally given researchers the opportunity to see how this trend will impact urban mobility.
The new study covers the period April 2020 to October 2022 and includes Google data on remote work patterns, as well as Federal Highway Administration information on car travel and a national database on transit ridership. It is. Researchers correlated transportation behavior with increases and decreases in remote work in different states and metropolitan areas to determine the impact of increased remote work on car travel and public transportation.
They found that public transport ridership declined more than twice as fast as car trips in response to a similar decline in frontline workers.
“People mainly use transit to commute to work. When people start working from home, the need for commuting is greatly reduced. ,” said Dr. Yunhan Zheng, a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and lead author of the new paper. “On the other hand, many people use their cars for transportation other than commuting. They go shopping, go to restaurants, or go to leisure activities. Working from home doesn't necessarily eliminate these activities. It does not mean.”
Because of these differences between driving behavior and transit behavior, “this could pose a financial sustainability challenge for transit agencies, and something needs to be done to address it.” For example, we could offer more services during off-peak hours in residential areas to better serve remote workers,” Zheng said.
Zheng, Wang, and their collaborators published their findings in Nature Cities on April 9. Researchers plan to continue analyzing the impact of remote work on urban mobility as new data becomes available and employment trends move beyond the direct effects of the pandemic.
