Telecommuting and environmental policy - lessons from the Ecommute program

Telecommuting and Environmental Policy

On the other hand, the data gathered in the ecommute program has some distinctive features that
can shed light on important questions concerning teleworking activity. The weekly commute log
combined with the commute profile enables relatively accurate estimates of the emission benefits from
telecommuting and other “green” commute options. Because information on commute-length and
vehicle type is specific to each participant, there is no need to rely on default averages, which might
overstate or understate the emissions savings from individual telecommuting behavior. Moreover,
because trip activity is recorded more or less contemporaneously, the reported level of telecommuting
may be more accurate than estimates obtained from one-time surveys. An additional advantage of the
data is that by following individuals through the life of the program, Teletrips allows for a detailed
examination of how program participation and telecommuting behavior change over time. Teletrips
provides one of the few sources of information on teleworking behavior over time.

5. Program Results

5.1 Basic Information from Teletrips

We obtained the Teletrips data in March 2004, thus the most recent employee entries are for the
last day of February. Table 1 shows the total number of companies that have joined the ecommute
program since it began in June 2001, the total number of employees enrolled, and the average number of
employees per company. It is important to understand that the 535 total employees enrolled across all
cities includes all employees currently in the system, as well as those who were in the system at one
time and then, for one reason or another, stopped reporting. Similarly, of the 49 registered companies,
some may have dropped out of the program and some are current.

Denver has had the most active ecommute program of the five cities, with 252 employees
enrolled across 13 companies. Los Angeles has as many companies signed up as Denver but far fewer
employees per company. Likewise, Washington, DC, has several companies but not very many
employees in each.

Table 1. Number of Companies and Number of Individual Employees Enrolled in the ecommute
Program, by City

as of March 1, 2004

As explained above, not all employees have been in the ecommute program since it began, and
not all who started have remained in the program - or at least have continued to fill out a weekly
commute log. Moreover, even those who have been in the system for a significant period of time do not
all reliably report their commute choices each week. In the next three tables, we present some summary
information on the lengths of time employees have been in the program, drop-out rates, and reporting
frequency.

Table 2 shows the number of employees enrolled less than 3 months, 3-6 months, 6-12 months,
and a year or more. These figures are generated by counting the number of days between the first date
the employee reported to the system and the last date of reporting (as of March 1, 2004). Thus, an
employee may have gaps in his commute log, but we do not consider that dropping out of the program.
Over half of the 535 employees in the system, 276 people, have been enrolled for at least a year. The

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