The subject field is within technology and social change, with focus particularly on telecommuting and the possible changes that arises in the travel patterns as a result of the telecommuting situation. When a person starts working from home once or twice a week instead of commuting back and forth to the main work place, a number of changes in the telecommuters' distribution of travel can and most probably will arise. The commute trip is often excluded, which leads to the so-called substitution effect. Non-work related trips might be generated and the mix of different types of trips as well as the trips temporal and modal choices is affected. On the aggregate. urban congestion may be reduced and the work form may contribute to the urban sprawl, which may lead to an increase in vehicle kilometres travelled. These and some other travel pattern changes due to telecommuting are the topics studied in the thesis. The comprehensive purpose is to: "Describe how telecommuting affects telecommuters' travel and travel patterns by exploring the work form's travel implications. their mutual interaction and explaining the consequent travel outcome".

The thesis has confirmed the work forms net travel reducing effect. Commute trips obviously decreases when working from home, but telecommuting is also expected to lead to an increase in non-commute trips, which it does too, but the work form even reduces a number of non-commute trips, with the probable total outcome of a net travel reduction even for the non-commute trips. A discovery that makes the travel reduction less than initially believed however is the substantial amount of telecommuters frequently practising half-day telecommuting. Half-day telecommuting does in turn stimulate travel mode changes. with increased car usage for commuting in preference of public transportation. For non-commutes, the travel mode tends to shift from cars to non-motorised travel means, such as bicycles and walks instead.

A conceptual model is constructed in order to increase the understanding of the underlying causes for the interrelations between telecommuting and travel and the accordingly travel effects. Further, the relations and connections between telecommuting and long distance telecommuting is contextually discussed with regards to how rural telecommutcrs travel pattern potentially differentiates from urban telecommuters. The discussion resulted in 18 hypothetical differences between urban and rural telecommuters' travel patterns, which provide a foundation on which to develop future studies.

The research field of telecommuting and its travel implications has been studied for more than 30 years. The research field's questions have methodologically been studied deductively, speculatively and inductively. The research has been able to confirm the existence of a number of different travel relations, but a firm foundation that connects and describes the various travel effects interrelations has not been made, which is what this articles aims to do: to contextually describe and discuss how telecommuting affects various trips and travel patterns and present a conceptual model hereof. The method used has been theoretically deductive and empirically inductive. The result is a model of four contextually and indirectly affecting travel categories and three directly affecting travel categories. These seven categories and their inbound travel variables are desribed, as is their reciprocal relations and, in the end, the travel outcome.

The so-called urban sprawl effect is being explored from the perspective of the growing number of long distance commuters. There are two large ongoing trends of people moving in opposite directions - the "sprawl" versus the "centralization" effect, meaning that telecommuters move out of the urban areas at the same time as telecommuters are able to stay in their native rural regions while holding city jobs. Both categories stimulate an increase in long distance commuting. Driving forces and barriers for the growth of these ongoing occurrences is explored. Learning from the literature has been derived, using known relations between regular commuters and telecommuters travel patterns to adapt these to the specific travel characteristically preconditions that applies for of long distance commuters, providing for a definition of what a long distance telecommuter represents and the suggestion of eighteen speculative hypotheses of long distance telecommuters travel patterns. The long distance telecommuters are according to these hypotheses expected to present a rather different travel pattern than urban telecommuter.

For a long time, telecommuting has been expected to affect the aggregated travel pattern. A number of cause-effect relationships between telecommuting and travel have been identified in literature concerning different types of trip with both decreased and increased travel as the outcome. To explore how telecommuting affects travel and travel patterns in Sweden an empirical study was conducted. The most important cause-effect relationship concerns three categories: work-trips, non-work-related trips and combination trips. The travel pattern, which is based on the telecommuter's regularity of trips, the point in time for different types of trip and the travel mode used, is also studied. The present results are compared with international findings, with the aim to create better understanding of how telecommuting affects the telecommuter's travel pattern and approximately estimate the magnitude of the travel impact. Finally, there is a contextual discussion concerning the probable total travel effects of telecommuting.

Transportation has steadily increased since the Second World War, and the trend towards increasing congestion in most urban areas is of great concern for traffic planner. There is one single factor that may reduce this travel-increasing trent though, the new flexible work form of telecommuting where people work from home on a regular basis during regular working hours instead of commuting back and forth to the main workplace at the conventional times. The aim of this paper is to provide an understanding of the telecommuters' travel choices by formalising the main empirical findings within the field. Main findings are that commuters' travel does decrease, not by a hundred percent on telecommuting occasions as initially expected, but approximately by fifty percent. This halving of the substitution effect mainly depends on the frequently occurence of part day telecommuting. The anticipated increase in non-commute travel only occurs marginally. Finally, travel mode choices seem to be affected by telecommuting, in that half-day telecommuting stimulates car usage in preference to public transportation.

Informationsteknikens möjligheter har ändrat många förutsättningar inom näringslivet. En sådan förändring är hur arbete organiseras och utförs. Nya flexibla arbetsformer har uppstått varav arbete på distans är en. Arbetsformen ger nya frihetsgrader i tid och rum med nya beteendemönster och en ny livsstil. En konsekvens är att distansarbetarens resor förändras. Allt sedan arbete på distans - telecommuting - myntades som begrepp för drygt 25 år sedan, har det spekulerats i om arbete på distans påverkar distansarbetarens resor.

Till att börja med utgick man ifrån att arbete på distans skulle leda till ett reducerat arbetsresande. Vid närmare studium har det visat sig att det inte bara är arbetsresor som påverkas, utan även komplementresor, inköpsresor och rekreationsresor. Vidare är det inte enbart distansarbetaren som påverkas, utan även hushållsmedlemmarnas resor och resmönster. Till direkta effekter på resandet hör även mer indirekta, långsiktiga verkningar, som ett reducerat behov av bil och ett förändrat markutnyttjande genom att människor i högre utsträckning än tidigare väljer att flytta ut från tätorter. De potentiella sambanden är många och effekterna på resandet är inte enbart positiva.

Om olika typer av resor påverkas, kommer distansarbetarens resvanor att förändras och om en tillräckligt stor andel av de yrkesverksamma övergår till arbete på distans kommer även det aggregerade resmönstret att påverkas. Detta är av intresse för transport- och samhällsplanerare, eftersom resorna allt seden efterkrigstiden kontinuerligt har ökat och inga tecken, förutom just arbete på distans, tyder på att ett trendbrott är förestående. Ämnet har alltså inte enbart ett inomvetenskapligt intresse, utan även en mycket konkret och praktisk anknytning genom att det hjälper oss att förstå och förutse de framtida transportbehoven. Studie lyfter fram sambanden mellan arbete på distans och resor, undersöker specifika effekter med avseende på ökning och minskning av resandet och presenterar en konceptuell modell av distansarbetets olika effekter på resor.

Information technology has changed many of the possibilities and prevailing circumstances of the business world. One of these changes involves how work is organized and performed. New flexible forms of work have appeared, including telecommuting. This form of work will provide new degrees of freedom in time and space with new patterns of behavior and a new life-style. One consequence is the change in travel patterns of the telecommuter. Ever since the term telecommuting was coined more than 25 years ago, there has been speculation about whether it will affect the travel patterns of telecommuters.

In the early stages it was assumed that distance work would result in a reduction of work-related travel. On closer examination it appears that not only is work-related travel affected, hut also complementary trips, shopping trips and recreational trips as well. Furthermore, the telecommuter is not the only one affected; travel and travel patterns of other family members are also affected. Direct effects on travel are accompanied by more indirect, long-term effects as well, such as a reduced dependency on automobiles and a change in land usage as people choose to a greater extent than previously to move away from the cities. There are many potential interconnections and the effects on travel are not wholly positive.

If different types of travel are affected, the travel habits of telecommuters will change and if a sufficiently large proportion of employed people become telecommuters, the aggregate travel pattern will also be affected. This is of interest for planning transport and town-planning, since travel in post-war years has continually increased and there are no signs, with the exception of telecommuting, of any change in this trend. This topic is of interest not only within the scientific discipline itself; it also has highly concrete and practical implications in helping us to understand and predict future transport requirements. This study examines the interconnections between telecommuting and travel, it investigates specific effects on the increase and reduction in travel and presents a conceptual model of the various effects of telecommuting on travel.