Do they work? : Exploring possible potentials of neighbourhood Telecommuting centres in supporting sustainable travel

Digitally enabled neighbourhood telecommuting centres (NTCs) in residential areas may have the potential to reduce the environmental burdens of transport by shortening work trips and enabling modal shifts. This paper presents the results of a Living Lab where 67 participants were given access to an NTC. Through this Living Lab, this study identifies several conditions required for an NTC to substantially reduce commuting and overall have a positive impact on sustainable travel. The results indicate that while a small group of participants who lived very close to the NTC made significant lifestyle changes and adopted more sustainable travel practices, the overall changes in the sustainability aspects of travel for most participants were minimal. The majority of the participants merely exchanged a day spent working from home for a day at the NTC, as they were only allowed to be absent from the employer’s office one day per week. Further, some participants found it difficult to work remotely due to organisational roles and workplace norms. Another factor that limited the sustainability effect of the NTC was that most participants normally commuted by train, but in a few cases travelled to the NTC by car. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, most participants were required to work exclusively from home, which proved to have both positive and negative effects on the participants’ everyday lives and well-being. The participants reported a radical shift in attitudes towards remote working during this period, which they believed could lead to remote working becoming more common after the pandemic. In this case, NTCs could possibly play an important role in enabling this shift, by remedying some of the identified drawbacks of working from home. This could in turn enable a larger reduction in commuting. In areas where more people commute by car, sustainability effects would likely be greater.