Toward sustainable transportation: exploring transportation decision making in teleworking households in a mid-sized Canadian city.
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Toward sustainable transportation: exploring transportation decision making in teleworking households in a mid-sized Canadian city.
Abstract
There is growing awareness that Canadian urban transportation systems are not sustainable. However, we have only a limited understanding of how travel decisions are affected by policy or other circumstantial changes that are purported to address sustainability concerns. This paper reports on an in-depth, small-sample experiment designed to explore issues that require nontraditional travel data. The locus is on household-level responses to a vehicle-reduction scenario in the context of teleworking households in a mid-sized Canadian city. The study design allows for comparisons of 'actual' versus 'gamed' activity and travel patterns. Two themes were explored: telework as an enabler of travel changes; and the persistence of and reasons for auto dependency within teleworking households. Results suggest that teleworking households have a high capacity to adapt to a vehicle-reduction scenario, while making only minor changes to activity patterns. Despite the ability to change, the six participating households displayed continued auto reliance. Barriers that prevent telework from reaching its potential as an auto-reduction strategy emerged during the game. Keywords: Telework, transportation, activity diary, stated-adaptation game Resume Il y a une prise de conscience croissante que les systemes urbains canadiens de transport ne sont pas renouvelable. Cependant, nous avons une comprehension limitee de la facon dont la prise de decision de voyage est entache par la politique ou d'autres changements circonstanciels qui sont censes adresser des soucis de la viabilite ecologique. Dans cette etude, un jeu d'enoncer-adaptation a ate developpe et applique a un petit echantillon de menages canadiens qui teletravail a domicile afin d'explorer les processus du niveau du menage, la prise de decision de voyager dans une ville domine de voiture de serie intermediaire. Des menages qui ont autrefois eu deux ou trois vahicules ont eta invites reformuler leur semaine ayant seulement une automobile disponible. Le jeu fournit des points sur le teletravail comme un activateur de changements du comporternent de voyage. Les resultats suggerent que les menages qui teletravail ont une capacite elevee de s'adapter a un scenario de reduction de vehicule, tout en faisant seulement des changements mineurs aux modeles d'activite. En depit de la capacite de changer, tousles manages participants ont montre une continuita d'un besoin de voiture. Les resultats accentuent les obstacles empechant le teletravail d'atteindre sa pleine capacite comme stratagie de Gestion de la demande en transport (GDT). Mots cles: Taletravail, transport, journal d'activite, jeu affirme-adaptation Introduction Several reports highlight the high level of auto dependence in urban areas of Canada (Pucher 1998; The Cent...See the full content of this document
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