The travel substitution characteristics of telecommunications continue to be
acclaimed. Some policy mavens declare that telecommunications can be thought of
as "information transportation." Instead of moving people and paper in vehicles
riding on heavy, costly infrastructure, the information in people's heads,
desks, briefcases, and computer files is transmitted at the speed of light
through cables and the air. Indeed, telecommuting is not the only way that
telecommunications can act as a substitute for transportation. Other examples
beyond telecommuting include the following:
- Telecommunications allows sporting, entertainment, political, religious,
and other events to be broadcast to a dispersed audience instead of requiring
that the audience travel to the event in order to see and hear it.
- Telecommunications enables observations from scattered sites to be
collected and transmitted to a central point via remote sensing rather than by
a human observer. One example is gas, electric, and water meters' being
monitored by data telecommunications rather than by a meter reader who visits
the premises.
- The NII enables people to initiate travel to a needed destination only
after using telecommunications to find that the trip will be necessary or
productive. Examples include phoning for the estimated time of arrival of a
plane or train before going to meet an arriving passenger, being informed by an
organizational superior that attendance at a meeting is not required, and
checking with a store to see if an item is in stock before driving in Saturday
traffic to the mall.
- Telecommunications allows consumers to make purchases by telephone or
on-line catalog instead of traveling to store locations. Besides reducing
travel requirements for shoppers, purchased items bypass so-called middlemen in
the transportation-intensive process of wholesale and retail distribution and
move more directly to end-user locations.
- The NII allows service transactions and events to be carried out in ways
that require no travel or less travel. Such transactions include use of payroll
direct deposits instead of taking paychecks to the bank, filing income tax
electronically rather than mailing tax returns, and going to neighborhood
electronic kiosks rather than traveling downtown.
- Telecommunications is a basic technology for expanding the opportunities
in both personal travel and goods movement to combine trips. Two people can
call each other to arrange to share rides in one vehicle rather than drive
separately to a meeting. Voice and data communications in the freight industry
allows coordination of shipments and higher vehicle load factors.
- The NII can potentially lead to some household activity patterns that
consume lower levels of transportation than the alternatives. In other words,
interactive computer services and greater numbers of television channels in
homes may make staying home in the evening more attractive than going
out.
Telecommunications as a transportation substitute is becoming embedded
in the thinking of transportation researchers and government planners. Many
erroneously use the words "telecommunications" and "telecommuting"
interchangeably. Specialists restrict the word "telecommuting" to mean those
employees and employee-like contract workers who do not commute between home
and an office on some of their work days. The term has been expanded by
journalists and politicians, however, to refer to any work-related practice
involving telecommunications that seemingly cuts down on travel, such as
operating a home-based business, receiving classroom instruction by
videoconferencing, or sending medical x-rays to a clinic across town by wire
rather than by envelope and messenger.
This report provides additional, cautionary perspectives on the idea that
telecommunications is exclusively a force for reducing the need to travel. We
explore how applications of telecommunications can act as a trip substitute and
simultaneously as a travel stimulant.
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