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Human behavior is notoriously difficult to change, but a disruption of the magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to bring about long-term behavioral changes. During the pandemic, people have been forced to experience new ways of interacting, working, learning, shopping, traveling, and eating meals. A critical question going forward is how these experiences have actually changed preferences and habits in ways that might persist after the pandemic ends. Many observers have suggested theories about what the future will bring, but concrete evidence has been lacking. We present evidence on how much US adults expect their own postpandemic choices to differ from their prepandemic lifestyles in the areas of telecommuting, restaurant patronage, air travel, online shopping, transit use, car commuting, uptake of walking and biking, and home location. The analysis is based on a nationally representative survey dataset collected between July and October 2020. Key findings include that the "new normal" will feature a doubling of telecommuting, reduced air travel, and improved quality of life for some. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion of whether, and to what extent, telecommuting can curb congestion in urban areas has spanned more than three decades. This study develops an integrated framework to provide the empirical evidence of the potential impacts of home-based telecommuting on travel behavior, network congestion, and air quality. In the first step, we estimate a telecommuting adoption model using a zero-inflated hierarchical ordered probit model to determine the factors associated with workers’ propensity to adopt telecommuting. Second, we implement the estimated model in the POLARIS activity-based framework to simulate the potential changes in workers’ activity-travel patterns and network congestion. Third, the MOVES mobile source emission simulator and Autonomie vehicle energy simulator are used to estimate the potential changes in vehicular emissions and fuel use in the network as a result of this policy. Different policy adoption scenarios are then tested in the proposed integrated platform. We found that compared to the current baseline situation where almost 12% of workers in Chicago region have flexible working time schedule, in the case when 50% of workers have flexible working time, telecommuting can reduce total daily vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and vehicle hours traveled (VHT) up to 0.69% and 2.09%, respectively. Considering the same comparison settings, this policy has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas and particulate matter emissions by up to 0.71% and 1.14%, respectively. In summary, our results endorse the fact that telecommuting policy has the potential to reduce network congestion and vehicular emissions specifically during rush hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on an important transport-related long-term effect of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States: an increase in telecommuting. Analyzing a nationally representative panel survey of adults, we find that 40–50% of workers expect to telecommute at least a few times per month post-pandemic, up from 24% pre-COVID. If given the option, 90–95% of those who first telecommuted during the pandemic plan to continue the practice regularly. We also find that new telecommuters are demographically similar to pre-COVID telecommuters. Both pre- and post-COVID, higher educational attainment and income, together with certain job categories, largely determine whether workers have the option to telecommute. Despite growth in telecommuting, approximately half of workers expect to remain unable to telecommute and between 2/3 and 3/4 of workers expect their post-pandemic telecommuting patterns to be unchanged from their pre-COVID patterns. This limits the contribution telecommuting can make to reducing peak hour transport demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]