Telecommuting and trip chaining: Pre-pandemic patterns and implications for the post-pandemic world

Telecommuting has boomed in popularity during the pandemic and is expected to remain at elevated levels persistently. Using 2009 and 2017 U.S. National Household Travel Surveys, we investigate if there exist consistent modification influences of telecommuting on trip-chaining behavior in the decade prior to the pandemic. We find telecommuting significantly increases people's propensity to chain trips, raises trip chaining frequency, and encourages more complex trip chains. Furthermore, these impacts are significant on commuting days, which suggests that telecommuters still have different trip chaining behavior than non-telecommuters on the days when they commute to the workplace. While trip chaining has been encouraged under pandemic conditions to minimize health risks, heightened health concerns will fade as the pandemic recedes. With telecommuting likely to persist, unraveling how trip chaining behavior had changed in response to telecommuting before the pandemic helps policymakers better understand the long-term changes in travel behavior in the post-pandemic world.