Some public policy analysts have argued that government regulatory changes aimed at accelerating the deployment of switched broadband telecommunications to residential premises, small businesses, and community service facilities such as schools and libraries would boost the use of telecommuting and other travel-substituting applications of telecommunications (Boghani, 1991, p. 61). Broadband means the capacity to carry at least one million bits of information per second.
The argument for explicitly modifying public policy to speed up deployment of broadband for travel substitution derives from a two-stage chain of logic: First, higher bandwidth telecommunications provides a step-up in communications capability. Second, a wide-spread improvement in communications capabilities throughout communities would accelerate trip substitution.
The first point is certainly true. Examples of telecommunications applications that work better as bandwidth increases are transmission of large document files, high-resolution images, and video segments; dial-in remote access to the internal computer network of a business; and videoconferencing.
On the second point, some particular uses of telecommunications that substitute for travel will undoubtedly be realized as higher bandwidth capabilities deploy more widely into residential neighborhoods. A CAD/CAM terminal operator would be able to link to the company mainframe from home while recovering from an accident. A doctor would be able to receive a digitized medical image at home and not have to drive in to the hospital on her long-planned day at home writing a research paper. Some supervisors would have a better feeling of control by seeing a video picture of the workers from a telecommuting location and thus might let telecommuting occur more often with more people.
But some caveats are in order. First and foremost, not all trip substitution requires new high-bandwidth infrastructure. Telecommuting is now growing by more than 10% annually using traditional infrastructure that works better because of new network attachments (like faster modems) and new telecommunications services (like ISDN) that squeeze out more bandwidth from the traditional copper wires that attach to all houses with telephone service. Many telecommunications applications that support telecommuting, such as voice mail, fax, and electronic mail, work well with today's services and customer premises equipment. These applications that are possible with today's low-bandwidth infrastructure provide for a growth in user experience and a thirst for efficiency in remote access that will increase user demand for the high-bandwidth applications of the future.
For the moment, and perhaps for the foreseeable future, low bandwidth is preferable in many telecommuting and teleservice situations. A video teleconference requires that one make an extra effort to make oneself presentable; a phone call does not. A lack of access to a company's future video-capable e-mail gateway may let a telecommuter gain a higher level of concentration on the immediate task at hand. As another example, successful persuasion activity often works better with incomplete and even distorted information to the prospective "buyer." More information provided by high bandwidth or other means is not obviously better. New and small firms operating in humble facilities succeed in the early stages only by distorting information to prospective customers about their level of resources.
The preference for low bandwidth noted here does not mean that on-call, readily available, optional access to broadband services would not be helpful to the support of trip substitution in the context of a particular organization and its employees and customers. The point, rather, is that lack of high bandwidth is not likely to be an obstacle to getting started on travel elimination. Further, the decision to upgrade to higher bandwidth applications can be analyzed as an incremental improvement over existing communications patterns.
In addition, the newer high-bandwidth applications such as two-way video communications do not automatically lead to trip substitution. For example, a detailed evaluation of a long-term continuous video connection (called a "media space") between two Xerox laboratories located in different cities concluded: "Mediated communication systems such as the media space are frequently compared to face-to-face interaction. It is important to reiterate that we did not try to replace face-to-face communication nor do we believe that mediated communication can replicate the face-to-face experience" (Bly, 1993).
A recent Delphi forecast panel of information technology experts estimated notably lower success probabilities for utilization levels of telecommunications applications that significantly substitute for travel than it estimated for the prospects for new hardware and software tools that would make such services technologically feasible (Halal, 1993). For example, the panel judged that broadband public networks would be deployed by the year 2007 with a probability of 84% and that much more powerful parallel processing computers would be available on networks by the year 2003 with a probability of 71%. The same group judged that electronic meetings replacing the majority of business travel had a probability of 40% of occurring by the year 2006 and that telecommuting by half of all workers would manifest with a probability of 52% by the year 2009. In these and other forecasts by the panel, the striking point is the relative optimism of the technology development forecasts in contrast to the relative pessimism of the technology utilization forecasts.
Furthermore, as the use of teleprocesses expands, the value of using travel will tend to increase. The opportunity to focus human attention exclusively on face-to-face presence, sensate experience, and physical interaction at meetings, places, and events will be a "scarce good" and thus more valuable, as a principle of economic supply and demand. Lunch with the boss, a teacher, or a good customer will always be worth more than a videoconference with that person. This dynamic means that travel demand is not likely to abate.
Could widespread broadband deployment offer new, unforeseen services that in some manner provide people with a compelling reason to travel less frequently? The evidence to date on the compelling things that people do now, such as eating, sleeping, having various kinds of fun, and engaging in addictive behaviors, is that people invariably like to do them in a variety of different locations. Tens of thousands of drunk driving accidents every year illustrate that people like to enjoy social contact and mobility even when the circumstances increase the probability that injuries and death may occur.
Most importantly, having a better telecommunications infrastructure available sooner will not automatically alter the dynamics that make telecommunications a travel generator, as described earlier: new relationships and transactions over a wider area, economic growth, suburbanization, transportation improvement, and just-in-time logistics. Simply accelerating the deployment of broadband interactive telecommunications connections into more end-user locations is unlikely to transform the economy toward lower transportation intensity, given the trip-increasing dynamics of telecommunications discussed in the previous chapter. Travel-generation dynamics, such as wealth generation and transportation improvement, are just as likely to be stimulated by more widespread broadband telecommunications as are the more familiar trip-saving dynamics.
Without targeting of investments based upon a more thorough understanding of the relationship between telecommunications and transportation on the part of decision makers in both the telecommunications and transportation sectors, public policy that succeeds in accelerating the deployment of more capable telecommunications infrastructure (such as residential broadband) risks stimulating social and economic forces that increase transportation consumption. Market-driven geographic phasing of new deployment of residential broadband is likely to exacerbate present trends. Early deployment to higher income areas in the suburbs would probably make traffic congestion worse, given the income elasticity of transportation expenditures shown in Exhibit 2-13. The point here is that public policy has to focus on the issue of transportation substitution and do something explicitly different to transportation, such as raising the cost of travel, if changes from present trends are to have any chance at all of happening.
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