How Telecommunications Is Changing the Work Commute

"The death of distance as a determinant of the cost of communicating will probably be the single most important force shaping society in the first half of the next century ...

"The result may not necessarily be less traveling - indeed when people need to meet their electronic contacts they may actually travel further than before - but traveling will be of a different kind."
　

"Death of Distance", Frances Cairncross of The Economist

September 16th & 23rd, 2002 - Ottawa, the capital city of Canada is located 200 kilometers from Montreal. And every Monday, commuters travel to work between both cities. A typical commute would take about two hours. While some of these travelers commute only on Mondays and Fridays, there are quite a few who are able to travel in both directions on the same day. However, they do not do so every day. Rather, they might travel every alternate day and work from home or some other location the other day. This is not only happening in Canada, in fact, Greyhound Bus Company seems to have developed a nice market niche in this area. We are not talking about thousands of daily workers, but certainly enough workers for maglev researchers to wonder how much larger this market can become under the right telecommunications-transportation infrastructure conditions.

• How has this market developed?
• What technologies are contributing to this market?
• Is this market an intercity travel market or a new expanded intracity commuting market?
• And importantly for Maglev researchers, how can an expanded intracity Maglev commuting service facilitate this changing nature of work to the mutual benefit of workers and employers?

This market has blossomed since 1980. Between 1980 and 1990, the latest decade census available, commuting between metropolitan regions has grown twice as fast as commuting within metropolitan regions. Two income households, declining labor tenure, housing affordability, and the increasing specialization of work have all contributed to this new market.

Certainly, the telecommunications revolution has spurred this trend along. It used to be that the typical commuting range in terms of travel time was one hour in each direction. But this was for a five-day workweek. Today when commuters need to be at their work office every second or third day, their daily commuting time threshold is expanded. We really do not know whether we should be looking at their weekly time budget or daily time budget. But the evidence with Greyhound Buses and Voyageur in Montreal-Ottawa and Montreal-Quebec, seem to indicate that workers are able to tolerate longer work commutes if not required on a daily basis.

When Francis Cairncross said that people may need to travel further and that this travel would be of a different kind, she certainly addressed the changing nature of the work commute trip. Measured by distance, travel between metropolitan regions is considered an intercity trip. However, defined by trip purpose where travelers leave their home to get to their workplace, such trips are classified as intracity commuting trips. Telecommunications has liberated the workplace location to such an extent, that it has evidently lengthened travel behavior.

Magplane Technology Inc. has developed a research program to probe the relationship between the changing nature of the workplace and radically improved transportation technologies, such as maglev. We believe that the location liberating effects of telecommunications are expanding the employment catchment area for specialized creative workers that conceive and build new products for the marketplace. The spatial limit of this range will depend not only on the reach, cost and convenience of telecommunications and transportation technologies, but also organizational changes pursued by employers who would benefit most from an expanded pool of specialized labor.

The search to understand the potential of induced demand cannot be exclusively focused on current travelers but must also include New Economy employers to understand how an urban maglev system can provide important labor productivity benefits.

Sources:

The Economist, Press the Flesh, not the Keyboard
Greyhound Buses, (for an intriguing look at long distance commuting)

The Impact of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) on Inter-Urban

Commuting and the Demand for Commercial Transportation