Pengyu Zhu

Telecommuting, Household Commute and Location Choice

Pengyu Zhu — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 10:55:20 PDT

Previous empirical studies have made contributions to the understanding of the impact of telecommuting on individual travel patterns. There has been much less research that has examined the impact of telecommuting on commute travel at the household level. Using data from the 2001 and 2009 US National Household Travel Surveys, this study focuses on one-worker and two-worker households and investigates how telecommuting affects household one-way commute distance and duration. The results show that telecommuting increases the commute distance and duration for both one-worker households and two-worker households. It is also found that, in two-worker households, the telecommuting status of one worker does not increase the commute distance and duration of the other worker. These findings suggest that telecommuting (two-worker) households tend to choose locations involving a longer total one-way commute than non-telecommuting households, and this difference is largely due to the longer commute of their telecommuting members.

Are Telecommuting and Personal Travel Complements or Substitutes?

Pengyu Zhu — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:51:45 PDT

Whether telecommuting and personal travel are complements or substitutes is a key question in urban policy analysis. Urban planners and policy makers have been proposing telecommuting as part of travel demand management (TDM) programs to reduce congestion. Based on small samples, several empirical studies have found that telecommuting has a substitution effect (although small) on commute travel, and have thus argued that policies promoting telecommuting might be promising in reducing travel. Using data from the 2001 and 2009 National Household Travel Surveys (NHTS), this study involves two large national samples to try to more accurately identify the impact of telecommuting on workers’ travel patterns. Through a series of empirical tests, this research investigates how telecommuting influences workers’ one-way commute trips, daily total work trips, and daily non-work trips, and tries to provide some answers to a question that has been discussed for some years—namely, whether telecommuting and personal travel are complements or substitutes. The results of these tests suggest that telecommuting has been an important factor in shaping personal travel patterns over the 2001–2009 period, and that telecommuting indeed has a complementary effect on not just workers’ one-way commute trips, but also their daily total work trips, and total non-work trips.

Donor States and Donee States: Investigating Geographic Redistribution of the US Federal-Aid Highway Program 1974-2008

Pengyu Zhu et al. — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 07:51:44 PDT

In 2009, the US government spent more than $42 billion on the federal-aid highway program. Most of this money was raised from motor vehicle taxes, whose proceeds are deposited in the highway trust fund. Federal motor vehicle user taxes flow into the fund and aid expenditures flow out from it to build and maintain highways and other transportation infrastructure. With so much money at stake it should be no surprise that expenditure decisions are the subject of intense political debate. Chief among these debates is the conflict between donor states, whose residents pay more in highway user taxes than the state receives in federal highway aid and donee states, whose residents pay less in highway user taxes than the state receives in highway aid. While this geographic redistribution has been masked recently by infusions of general fund revenue into the trust fund, the debate nevertheless continues. This paper attempts to understand why some states are donors and others are donees by simultaneously testing four hypotheses about the geographic redistribution of federal highway dollars that relate to a state’s highway need, economic condition, level of urbanization, and representation on the key Congressional oversight committees. The analyses show that redistribution does not favor states with larger highway systems, more highway use, or lower median incomes, all of which are different indicators of need. Instead, states that are less urban and better represented on the four key Congressional committees generally benefit from redistribution. These findings indicate that the user tax revenues are not used in places where they are most needed. Thus they provide little empirical support for any compelling policy argument for continued geographic redistribution of federal highway user tax dollars.

Mechanism of the Urban Spatial Extension in Metropolitan Areas

Pengyu Zhu et al. — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:19:27 PDT

Demand for Urban Forests and Economic Welfare: Evidence from the Southeastern U.S. Cities

Pengyu Zhu et al. — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:19:26 PDT

This study examines the relationship between urban forests and household income and population density in the 149 cities with populations over 40,000 in nine southeastern states. Our empirical results show that urban forest percentage across the cities has characteristics of the environmental Kuznets curve. We find that household income around $39,000 is a threshold that changes the relationship between income and urban forest coverage from negative to positive, whereas the impact of population density on urban forests is just the opposite, from positive to negative when population density is around 180 persons per square kilometer.

Demand for Urban Forests in United States Cities

Pengyu Zhu et al. — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:19:25 PDT

Extensive economic investigations have shown a variety of benefits derived from urban forests, but study on demand for urban forests remains limited. This study investigates the impact of selected potential factors on the demand for urban forests at the city level. An empirical economic model is used to examine and estimate the demand for urban forests in all cities with population over 100,000 in the United States. The empirical findings suggest that the demand for urban forests is elastic with respect to price and highly responsive to changes in income. Urban forest area increases as total population grows but at a lower rate than population growth.

Understanding Large Land Holders on the Urban Fringe: A Supply-Side Perspective

Pengyu Zhu et al. — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 10:19:24 PDT