Working from Home: The case of Greater Perth

The Working from home: Changes in transport demand in Perth project was part of an Australia-wide collaborative initiative to “… to assess the prevalence, impacts and possible future trajectory of Working from Home (WFH).

Partners with iMOVE on this project were the Department of Transport (WA), Main Roads Western Australia, the University of Western Australia, and the Planning and Transport Research Centre (PATREC).

Please note that the work on this project was completed in late 2022.

Objectives

This research aimed to consider the following matters:

• the extent to which WFH has been undertaken and will continue;
• the productivity impact when WFH is compared to the workplace, from the perspectives of individuals, employers, and the economy at large;
• the proportion of reduced travel demand that is attributable to WFH;
• the utility of WFH as a future demand management tool for the mitigation of congestion on all transport networks;
• the potential for higher levels of WFH to enable expansions of the road network to be deferred or avoided; and
• the policy initiatives that would be required if it became desirable to expand the level of WFH.

Survey results

For the purposes of this project, employers and employees completed surveys. Employer perspectives were obtained via 20 businesses from the Perth metropolitan area between June and July 2021, two months after the first mandatory lockdown.

The employee perspectives were gleaned from a three-wave survey.

• Wave 1 was carried out between May and June 2021, following the 3rd period of lockdown for the Perth and Peel regions between 23 April to 28 April 2021.
• Wave 2 was carried out three months after Wave 1 – between September and October 2021.
• Wave 3 was carried out between late February and mid-March 2022, which was the period just after state borders opened for Western Australia (WA) for the first time in two years, and when the Omicron cases began to surge. This was a period of high uncertainty reflecting the beginning of a new phase for WA which had experienced very few COVID cases up until that point. Many persons opted to WFH in these circumstances.

Pre-COVID, the percentage of people WFH was estimated to be between 5% and 8%. Across the three waves of employer and employee surveys undertaken for this research, it was found that 16.2% of work hours per week, were worked at home. Respondents indicated they would prefer to work 29.3% of their total weekly work hours, at home.

In terms of being in favour or otherwise of the continuation of WFH:

Findings from one location are….not immediately comparable to Greater Perth. Overall, despite variations in the way that the pandemic was managed in different jurisdictions, at this point it is clear that the patterns for WFH in Greater Perth are mirrored elsewhere. The significant acceleration in WFH practice in Greater Perth (compared to the pre-pandemic period) is consistent with other Australian and American studies, and the hybrid WFH pattern is the most popular. Of note is a preference by employees to continue to WFH.

It appears that office-based occupations/ industries are more likely to be able to WFH, although in any occupation there are tasks that can be undertaken at home rather than on-site.

WFH has been a positive experience for many employees in the US and Europe, as in Greater Perth. The benefits of not commuting to the workplace every day are shared by others. Translation into reductions in travel distance and number of trips will vary by urban structure, the given transport system and geography – but the reduction in public transport patronage has been mirrored elsewhere, to a lesser or greater extent.

Impacts of working from home

Travel demand

In terms of overall impact on the transport network, the weekly decrease in commuting converted to the removal of approximately 128,300 daily commuting trips (both public and private transport) from the network total of 4.6 million trips (all purposes, two modes).

There was some increase in road use since the onset of COVID, primarily in inner-city and inner-suburban locations. Factors contributing to these increases in these locations, included:

• suspension of car parking fees in the central CBD area; and
• lower public transport (PT) patronage.

However, road traffic volumes returned to pre-pandemic levels (noting that car parking fees have been reinstated), and public transport patronage showed signs of recovery (that said, bus patronage climbed more sharply than train).

A series of travel demand modelling scenarios were run to test different rates of WFH, travel mode and the potential for work commute trips to be replaced by car trips for other journey purposes (as a result of time savings from the reduction in commute trips). An important finding is that the WFH scenarios show significant transport system benefits which increase with higher WFH rates.

There is a reduction in trip volumes, trip distance, travel time, and benefits remain even after scenarios for PT patronage reduction, replacement and rebound car trips are considered. Benefits are not only afforded to those that WFH, but also to those who continue to commute to work (through less congestion and faster journeys – although this may disbenefit public transport).

Land use

“The popular model for WFH has been the hybrid-model, usually with up to two days worked at home and the rest in the workplace. There have been changes in internal office floorspace requirements – in some cases contraction, but in others a demand for more floorspace, as a result of activity-based working and the need to improve physical distancing.

The reduction in work commute trips has seen workers commuting less by car due to WFH for part of the working week. The transport modelling scenario work suggests very significant annual savings in terms of transport economic benefits. This result demonstrates that road network capacity does not need to be extended (i.e. road infrastructure investment can be “deferred”).

Attention must be paid to home-work relationships as origins and destinations of commute trips. At a broad level there are a higher proportion of white-collar workers that now WFH. White-collar jobs are concentrated in the Perth CBD and inner suburbs where accessibility by public transport across Greater Perth is high. Relaxing car parks charges during the pandemic resulted in increased traffic volumes in these areas and has demonstrated the importance in managing travel demand by car in order to avoid investment in road infrastructure.

Policy priorities for achieving WFH in the context of travel demand management

A multi-disciplinary set of policy initiatives relevant to the Perth context are outlined in section 5 of the final report, organised by policy sector: transport, environment, urban planning, infrastructure, and society (the latter including work and business practices), and to be considered as an integrated package.

A range of perspectives and approaches are recommended in each section, as policy pointers, to facilitate the link with the empirical evidence, however, key recommendations for policy and practice are provided below. It is not within the scope of this research to test these initiatives; more longitudinal research would be required to illuminate their potential.

Some of the policy recommendations stemming from this research are:

• Carbon Reduction Plans – commuting focus: Businesses reported a lack of sustainable transport policies. A requirement for a carbon budget for each business with the requirement for carbon reduction would expose the extent to which work-commuting contributes to carbon emissions – this would highlight the need for business level climate mitigation actions.
• Parking strategies: Stronger controls/costs for private non-residential parking at key employment places may contribute to businesses reducing the number of car parking spaces available to employees (especially where this has increased in response to aversion to use PT for bio-security reasons).
• Balance commuting patterns: Measures to balance commuting patterns across all weekdays may be warranted, given that the travel may be for other reasons and spatially oriented towards the fringes and regional areas.
• Conversion of road and parking spaces: Discourage mode shifts back to private vehicles due to greater availability of road / parking capacity from a general decline in commuting.
• Explore congestion charges: Increasing the cost of commuting by private vehicle into the central area with encourage WFH on some days and incentivise PT use for the work journey.
• Encourage a reduction in single-occupant car trips: Focus on policies for net zero emissions will also encourage WFH (reducing number of trips, reducing distances, reducing energy/fuel/km or replacing with greener sources).
• Reconfiguration of streets to support active travel: Promote more local activities and make WFH more enticing (considering the potential breaks and the before-after work activities).
• Better data on WFH: Continue building the evidence base on WFH experiences to support relevant decision making and allow for better monitoring of WFH uptake and effects.

Other recommendations and observations

• Creating flexible work policies within organisations helps to formalise the ability of employees to WFH, meaning that employees have the right to ask for flexible working options no matter whether their immediate manager supports it or not. In addition to productivity and wellbeing effects, better utilisation of space and consideration of sustainability targets may be achieved.
• Reducing free parking and promoting other financial disincentives for car users, to reverse impacts on PT patronage
• Promoting/enhancing PT as an enabler of multimodal trip chains, embedding active transport and electric mobility before or after a PT journey, is has the potential to boost ridership.
• Online home deliveries (representing substitutes for on-site shopping and some leisure activities) increased during the pandemic and their use may continue in the future at similar rates. Urban logistics and the courier, express and parcel segment have shown high growth rates compared with their role pre-COVID. A detailed analysis of non-work trips (enabled by the PATHS data or other sources) may clarify the extent of the substitution patterns. Data integration and mining of the multiple surveys and counts will assist testing additional scenarios for the strategic models.

Download the final reports

More detail of the project’s methodology, findings, and recommendations are available in the following two downloadable reports:

• Working from Home: Changes in Transport Demand – the Case of Greater Perth: Overview Report
• Working from Home: Employee Perspectives – Travel and Values