If you’re fortunate enough to still be working during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, you are likely to be doing so from home. Teleworking (or telecommuting) has been suddenly and widely adopted. For example,
Arizona DOT reports doubling the number of employees who telework in multiple departments in just two weeks. In conjunction with Texas' disaster declaration related to COVID-19,
TxDOT is also requiring its office-based employees to telework beginning March 16. Your workplace is likely making similar efforts.
Globally, air quality levels are better than they have been in a long time, particularly important in light of the respiratory issues associated with COVID-19. At the same time, rates of personal driving, use of public transportation, air traffic, and to a lesser degree, freight have dropped steeply. Unrelated issues have caused the cost of gas to plummet. The combination of these factors have resulted in a significant drop in tax revenue that funds much of transportation.
Financial experts anticipated a reduction in transportation funding due to teleworking, online shopping, and home delivery and the pandemic has only exasperated the collection of revenue from transportation’s traditional funding streams. TRB’s recent report
Renewing the National Commitment to the Interstate Highway System: A Foundation for the Future calls on Congress to identify and adopt new transportation funding mechanisms that are equitable and efficient, do not unduly impose the burden of payment on future generations or on less financially equipped groups, and do not disadvantage or divert resources from other highways and modes of passenger and freight transportation
“There is enormous uncertainty right now in transportation funding, especially tolls and fuel tax revenue. The short term could include years of lighter traffic or we could be back to about 90% of pre-pandemic traffic in as little as a year,” says Martin Wachs, Professor of City and Regional Planning and of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of California. “In California, transportation agencies are looking at using their bonding authority to cover operating costs now with money that can be repaid over the coming decades. Right now, no “guaranteed” money is truly guaranteed and raising new funds is going to be politically painful.”
Innovative ideas and tough choices
Before much of the white-collar workforce began teleworking in mid-to-late March, the Congressional Budget Office had already estimated the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund would be exhausted in 2021 and the Highway Account by 2022. States have been thinking outside the pump in terms of how their transportation revenue can be maintained. Oregon’s OReGo road usage charge per mile was mentioned in TRB’s National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) report
Forecasting Transportation Revenue Sources: Survey of State Practices. The research notes that state DOTs’ hands are tied in forecasting revenues until legislation accommodates new sources of funding. New revenue initiatives can be politically complex and are subject to broad public debate.
NCHRP’s
State Department of Transportation Role in the Implementation of Transportation Demand Management Programs describes some ideas that manage demand for driving and also consider revenue implications for funding transportation—including pay-as-you-drive insurance, parking pricing, and congestion pricing. Charging for highway use by the mile can be done efficiently and accurately, notes TRB’s
Critical Issues in Transportation in 2019. As early as the 1990s, states from Oregon to Georgia were exploring tax credits for employers who implemented telecommuting programs at various levels per the TRB Transit Cooperative Research Program’s (TCRP)
Strategies for Increasing the Effectiveness of Commuter Benefits Programs.
Improving air quality
Research in
Transportation Research Record (TRR) in the 1990s based on California’s pilot project for allowing state employees to telecommute showed that, as expected,
work trips were reduced. It looked like an ideal way to mitigate traffic congestion and improve air quality. Over 25 years later, a
more nuanced study showed that regular teleworkers used time and money saved to either take trips they couldn’t during a normal work commute or move farther from the offices they were visiting less frequently. Before the mass scale seen during COVID-19, telecommuting showed mixed results in actually reducing congestion and improving air quality.
Telework-eligible employees aren’t always commuting to and from an office. An idea that holds hope for reducing congestion and improving air quality, introduced in the TRB Airport Cooperative Research Program’s (ACRP) report,
Policy and Planning Issues Roadmap Report, are air traffic control towers operated far from geographically remote airports. Commercial airports have long offered van shares or benefits for public transportation to their employees as a way to improve air quality and traffic congestion at airports and in their surrounding communities. Telecommuting, flextime, and compressed schedules are granted to employees based on work responsibilities, managerial approval, and performance reviews, found ACRP’s
Exploring Airport Employee Commute and Parking Strategies.
Successfully meeting new challenges
New and active TRB NCHRP projects are underway to help the transportation industry successfully meet the challenges of disruptive technologies, resilience, and economic opportunities. One will help develop a guide for understanding, predicting, planning for, and
adapting to disruptive technology like vehicle and infrastructure technology, mobility as a service, and the sharing economy. Another acknowledges the vulnerabilities transportation systems face and will take a step towards creating a guidebook for agencies to
integrate resilience into transportation planning at all scales. A third will explore transportation’s role in giving people in
rural areas access to economic opportunities and education.
All of these research areas will need further exploration, as COVID-19 has undoubtedly sent us into new and somewhat unexpected directions in terms of how society will get to and from work (or not) as we recover.
TRB and National Academies resources cited in this article:
Related TRB resources:
Related National Academies resources:
External resources cited:
By
Beth Ewoldsen/Transportation Research Board, May 7, 2020
This Summary Last Modified On: 7/30/2020