ABSTRACT
The impact on rail and road transport of significant reductions in commuting traffic would be mixed. Consider the loss of revenue to British Rail for example. Although this could be high there would be considerable economic advantage in the greater uniformity of usage during the day, although this advantage is bought at the cost of reduced manpower requirements and thus either decreased productivity or reductions in total labour employed. Similarly the impact on road construction would be relatively benign but the impact on private car usage (and therefore on ownership) much less so. There would in addition be a secondary impact on the occupancy and usage of city centres, although arguably this impact would be beneficial. It will be clear from the discussion so far that the social impact of wide scale use of telecommuting will be more direct than the case of teleconferencing where the social impacts are third order effects stemming from changes in the economy. The white collar worker living on the fringe of a large city would see a dramatic change in his life style, in his circle of friends and acquaintances and in his patterns of recreational activity. This would gradually effect the housing market, education and the whole panoply of regional policy. Since the impact on blue collar work would be much slower and less dramatic the possibility of increased tension between the social classes cannot be ignored. Indeed this could be further magnified if modern communications and microelectronic technology were perceived as improving the conditions of white collar workers, but destroying blue collar jobs.
