The Covid-19 pandemic has opened new avenues of research for Vermont groups that are studying driving behavior.
“The world that we’re living in is essentially an active experiment,” said Orian Welling, a senior analyst for the RSG research group in White River Junction. The company has been collecting real-time data resulting from the economic shutdowns in late winter and early spring. “What does it mean for travel and traffic?”
Covid-19 ended trips to school, to many workplaces, and to just about every other place people go regularly. People in Vermont and many other states limited their shopping trips, and many didn’t leave their homes except when absolutely necessary.
Thousands of people who could do so hastily set up their offices at home. Welling said personal vehicle travel dropped nationally about 37% from a baseline that was set in early March.
RSG — which has about 80 employees, 50 of them in Vermont — in August launched the third wave of a national survey with about 3,000 participants focused on understanding how people’s travel is changing as a result of the pandemic. The group collects data for cities, states and regions around the country.
RSG is also doing a survey for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The agency routinely counts cars year-round at various spots around Vermont, said Joe Segale, the agency’s planning and policy bureau director. What’s different now is that the agency is working with RSG on a survey of people’s travel choices and patterns. Like Welling, Segale views the traffic patterns of the pandemic as a demonstration project.
“We are having this huge test case going on now,” Segale said from his home office in Huntington. “We’re adapting and learning how to work at home. Will this really continue after the pandemic? How can we take advantage of it, and what are the obstacles to it continuing?”
Sustainable Transportation Vermont
A UVM group called Sustainable Transportation Vermont is also looking at the pandemic’s local impact. The group examines how employers can encourage workers to travel more sustainably.
Remote work is one of those ways, said Jack Hanson, a researcher for the STV group, which worked with UVM’s Center for Research on Vermont on a May report based on a survey of Vermonters about their driving behavior.
“We saw this once-in-a-lifetime massive shift, potentially, in commuting behaviors, and so we felt like it was important to gather data, get in touch with people, spark conversations, and try to use this moment to create lasting change,” Hanson said.
Hanson has been following up with people who responded to the survey; he wants to see if their companies have adopted or formalized telecommuting policies in the pandemic. Most haven’t, he said. He sees telecommuting as a good start to getting employers involved in other transportation measures, such as providing bus service or charging for parking.
“Telecommuting is one of a suite of strategies that employers can take to reduce single-occupant vehicle use,” he said.
In an April blog post, STV said 62% of employed Americans told Gallup recently that they had worked from home during the crisis, and it cited other research showing 56% of workers hold a job that’s at least partly compatible with working remotely. And it said Global Workforce Analytics estimated that as much as 30% of the workforce would be working from home more than one day a week by the end of 2021.
Hanson said most of the Vermont workers he has talked to think they work more productively at home, and would like their employers to formalize it. Some had already been advocating for telecommuting policies when the crisis began. Many said their employers have declined to help with paper, printer supplies, or Wi-Fi coverage.
“We’d want to see employers offering more support to facilitate this for more people,” Hanson said.
VTrans gets involved
There’s no Vermont-specific data on exactly how commuting behavior appears to have changed, or what it might look like in the future. But data from VTrans shows that the largest year-over-year drop in traffic during the pandemic happened on March 24, at 89%.
Separately, between July 21 and Aug. 24, the VTrans data collection location that showed the largest year-over-year drop was on I-89 in Middlesex.
VTrans hopes to find out much more through its work with RSG. The Vermont survey will have three parts, the first of which was carried out in July.
The same people will be surveyed again twice over the next three to six months to see how their attitudes about travel have changed, Segale said.
RSG uses surveys to get an understanding of individuals’ decisions about travel, not just their travel patterns, Welling said. It will also use the VTrans travel data in its analysis.
“It’s really important for understanding how travel may change if the economy changes, if telework policies change at workplaces,” said Welling, who himself moved from his office in White River Junction to an office in his barn in Hanover, New Hampshire, in March. “To be able to create a robust model where you can consider different scenarios in the future, you really need to get to why people are traveling.”
Remote working doesn’t solve the nation’s traffic congestion problems. People who don’t have to go to the office still make other trips they might once have included in their commute, such as picking up kids and groceries. But it does help spread trips out over the day, reducing congestion at peak times.
Transportation policymakers would like to maintain the 18% drop in commuting they saw in July.
“That requires thinking strategically about what you want the future to look like,” Welling said. “It requires business owners thinking about, do they want to change their work-from-home policies. It requires trip replacements, like food and other delivery services that are more efficient from a transportation perspective.”
Employers’ perspectives
Hanson hasn’t talked to employers, only employees. While some employers, including various state agencies, have no plans to return to their offices until at least the end of the year, others are calling staff back as soon as they can.
One of those is the manufacturer Rhino Foods in Burlington.
“We’re not a place that will say, ‘Everybody gets to work from home that could work from home,” said President Ted Castle. “We believe we have a safe environment. And we want to have a culture of collaboration.”
Castle noted there are still Rhino employees working at home as a result of the pandemic. Others are reporting in on a limited schedule. To Castle, it’s a matter of fairness as well.
“How do we look at someone who could work at home versus someone who has to come in and work on the line?” he said.
Burton Snowboards has always expected its headquarters employees to be physically present — with some exceptions — at the company’s Burlington offices, said Justin Worthley, senior vice president of global human resources for the company.
“Covid has turned that on its head where we are all working remotely,” said Worthley, speaking from his front porch in Burlington. “That is happening throughout the world.”
Worthley said the company had discovered some benefit to having some employees work remotely.
“We haven’t figured it all out yet, but we will be sustaining and maintaining some aspects of this around flexibility,” Worthley said. “We’re in that conversation right now: What does this look like after the pandemic?”
Segale said he was surprised at how well he had adapted to working at home, something he previously did one day out of five.
“We have good internet access here,” he said. “I have learned I can work at home and be really productive and communicate with people I supervise and manage them, and communicate with the people who supervise me and manage them. So I feel a lot more confident.”
