Quantifying the Business Benefits of TDM

Abstract

Transportation demand management (TDM) is more than carpooling.It is a set of strategies that fosters increased efficiency of the transportation system by influencing travel behavior by mode, time, frequency, trip length, cost or route.Many TDM strategies encourage the use of alternatives to driving alone to help lessen congestion and air pollution.The effectiveness of these efforts depends on employer cooperation and policies supporting these strategies.Employees' use of transit depends on the compatibility of the employer work hour policies and attendance policies such as flextime with transit schedules.The ability of employees to take advantage of advanced traveler information systems to alter arrival and departure times to avoid congested periods depends on those same employer policies.Employer work-life friendly programs such as compressed workweek programs and telework reduce traffic and parking demands.Employer parking policies determine the availability and price of parking that influence mode choice by employees.The provision of bike and locker facilities by employers can make the difference between someone choosing to drive or use a non-motorized method.Public transportation professionals have long believed that TDM provides a variety of benefits to employers.Telework programs can improve productivity, enhance recruitment and retention of employees, and reduce absenteeism.Compressed work week programs enable the employer to expand coverage to enhance customer service.Employers allowing employees to pay for transit passes and parking as a pre-tax benefit save payroll taxes.The TDM industry must largely depend on empirical evidence of these TDM strategies implemented by employers.Most of the tool sets available to assess the impacts of TDM programs have focused on the transportation and air quality benefits.These public benefits may have little relevance for most employers unless they were subject to a trip reduction mandate.Ironically, TDM programs target employers to carry out their missions.Therefore, the quantitative evidence of benefits that accrue directly to businesses from a wide range of programs could offer a strong motivation for employers to begin, continue, and/or expand travel alternatives support activities.The goal of this project was to identify the key business benefits of TDM and provide techniques for quantifying those benefits.This information should enhance the transportation professions understanding of TDM's value to business.This increase in awareness, in turn, should allow agencies to improve levels of employer participation in TDM and other transportation programs and thus provide reductions in congestion and air pollution for Florida and other states.From this point, a subsequent step for future research is the enhancement of existing tools (such as a custom-designed software application) to assist employers in assessing the costs and potential business benefits of implementing TDM programs Conclusions and Recommendations

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