A severe earthquake in the san francisco bay area offered an unexpected opportunity to study the relation between telecommuting and travel behavior under emergency conditions. Coincidentally, the state agency with the highest participation in a state telecommuting pilot project was located in san francisco. Interviews with pilot telecommuters, postearthquake telecommuters and managers in the public utilities commission (puc) revealed telecommuting as a flexible response to a transportation emergency that could be expanded without delay because it was a known and accepted work mode of that institution.The experience of the puc suggests that increased telecommuting canhelp minimize work disruption within an organization that has previously implemented telecommuting. The number of days telecommuted waslimited both by job-related factors and management policy. Althoughthose persons already telecommuting before the emergency increased their number of telecommuting days only temporarily, if at all, new telecommuters were added, nearly half of whom were continuing to telecommute months after the emergency was over. Thus a short-term modification of behavior stimulated by emergency conditions led to long-term changes in travel behavior. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1305, Finance, planning, programming, economicanalysis, and land development 1991.
Abstract