Agenda

Telecommute Model Proposal: Group Reactions

Technical

• Dave Ory provided a 5-minute overview (recap of the Telecommute model)
  • Telecommute frequency model well established: 1,2,3-4 days per week
  • Run CDAP first – Mandatory, Non-mandatory, Home
  • (mandatory redefined to both work inside and outside the home)
  • Telecommute Arrangement (NEW model): mix of in-home and out home episodes
  • In-home Work Activity Schedule (NEW): start time and end time or duration
  • Mandatory Tour Gen: number of work and school tour combos
• People have left comments in the Google doc
  • Guy – referenced Gallop study of remote capable jobs, 2-digit NAICS, could leverage or list in appendix; SANDAG has similar listing; Sijia may be region specific differences, reviewed SANDAG telecommute model UECs
  • Craig H – asked what post-COVID surveys show about telecommuting prevalence; Sijia said that there is a lot but there are a variety of combinations of in-home and out-of-home arrangements that make it complicated.
  • Joe asked whether the language indicated that we were considering multiple out of home work locations. Bhargava had a similar observation. It was agreed to put this issue into the parking lot due to complexity.
  • Bhargava – would like to see numbers for the empirical analysis. Sijia indicated that she could add them. Bhargava also expressed preference for Option 1 – hybrid telecommute model that decides persons telecommute and hybrid status at the same time. Option 2 breaks this down into two steps—telecommute status first, then out of out of home location.
• Joe said the document was logical and easy to understand. The in-home work activity scheduling lacks empirical data for start and end times, although we have duration.
• Sijia clarified that duration information is used but does not block out windows. Option 3 is a middle ground in which the choices are qualitative labels related how much of the day is spent at home, working at home, working away, etc.
• Joe expressed concern about the risk of re-specifying CDAP because of all of the downstream implications. Could get complicated. Dave Ory offered that the changes brought about by COVID made using CDAP to say people did not make a mandatory work tour but did not cover the variety of ways that people telecommute. Option 3 may be realistic but likely the most risk.
• Joe asked if we should do a risk assessment before diving in. Need to consider available data, possibly pooled from multiple regions. Joe also thought we should identify, though not solve, any issues with downstream models. Dave said that for every downstream model one can ask how we’d expect it to be different. The most obvious is non-mandatory tour duration. Some models may be affected more than others and matter more—we should identify those. Could have a prioritized list based on survey results.
• Alex said he thought the time window blocking in the in-home work scheduling model (Option 2) is not of value relative to the effort. David Ory said we already have similar time of day choice models in ActivitySim with code that could be reused, but could still turn off window blocking.
• Bhargava said he was not initially able to wrap his head around changing CDAP, but now understands that is necessary. Option 2 does seem to be the most problematic.
• Dave Ory invited other to make some final comments. We can represent the consensus opinion in the final draft recommendation, noting any other contentious issues.