Work flexibly, travel more healthily? How telework and flextime affect active travel in Switzerland

Wöhner, Fabienne (2023). Work flexibly, travel more healthily? How telework and flextime affect active travel in Switzerland. Transportation research. Part A: Policy and practice, 174, p. 103748. Elsevier 10.1016/j.tra.2023.103748

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The impact of flexible working arrangements, such as telework and flextime, on daily travel demand is widely discussed. Although there is no evidence that flexible working arrangements reduce traffic in Switzerland, they still might be beneficial for the environment and public health if they are associated with more active travel (i.e. walking and cycling). Hence, the aim of this study is to investigate the influence of telework and flextime on various active travel patterns as well as possible benefits for public health. Most studies agree on a positive association between telework and active travel. However, these studies mostly rely on spatial flexibility (i.e. working remotely), and do not consider temporal flexibility (i.e. flextime). This study is the first to include different extents of working schedule flexibility in order to analyze active travel behavior. Active mode choices and travel durations are analyzed using the 2015 Swiss Mobility and Transport Microcensus (MTMC) – a nationwide representative micro-data travel survey. The results of this study indicate that telework is not associated with the likelihood of using active modes of transport overall; however, teleworkers walk and cycle more for leisure purposes as compared to on-site workers. Furthermore, the analyses show that flextime (particularly core time) users are more likely to use active modes of transport as compared to people who have a predetermined working schedule, which is mainly attributed to the fact that flextime users walk more. In order to indicate some health benefits, flexible working arrangements are analyzed concerning traveling actively for 30 minutes or more per day. This threshold refers to the recommendation of the World Health Organization concerning health-enhancing amounts of physical activity. The analyses reveal that telework and flextime (core time) are significantly associated with a health-enhancing amount of active travel. Another important finding of this study is that the Body Mass Index (BMI) and the weather condition should be included as control variables in studies that aim to analyze the direct effect of flexible working arrangements on active travel behavior. Overall, this study shows the importance of both spatial and temporal flexibility for choosing active modes of transport. The latter finding in particular is important for future research and policy decisions, as until now the impact of telework on active travel has been the main consideration, without recognizing flextime.

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