Nasty traffic snarls alleviated and air quality on the rise could be tomorrow's headlines if telecommuting becomes the popular way to go to work, according to a University of California, Davis, researcher. To discuss the latest research regarding telecommuting from home and local telecommuting centers, Patricia Mokhtarian, UC Davis civil and environmental engineering assistant professor, has organized a session on Tuesday, Jan. 9, at 8:30 a.m. at this week's meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, D.C. "Quite a bit is known about home-based telecommuting, but center-based telecommuting is a new form about which relatively little is known," Mokhtarian said. Center-based telecommuting strikes a compromise between working at home and working from an office. It offers social interaction and a change in environment from the home but reduces the travel time and distance involved. Telecommuting uses telecommunication technology to bring work to employees in their homes or in nearby centers. If the practice is adopted by enough employers and their employees, Mokhtarian says, traffic congestion and air pollution in metropolitan areas could be reduced. Mokhtarian chairs the telecommunication and travel behavior committee for the Transportation Research Board and is the principal investigator on a $3.5 million grant to operate and evaluate telecommuting centers in California, funded by California Transportation Department and the Federal Highway Administration. The first part of the session will focus on factors influencing the appeal of telecommuting to employees and employers. UC Davis graduate students David Stanek and Michael Bagley will present their research modeling workers' preferences for home- or center-based telecommuting. Center-based telecommuting appeals to highly motivated workers looking to reduce the stress levels in their lives according to the UC Davis researchers; the workers typically have children between the ages of 6 to 16 and prefer a comfortable and non-distracting work environment close to home. Also in this session, UC Davis graduate student Dennis Henderson will present findings that air pollution is reduced when telecommuting is adopted, because less time and fewer travel miles are used by workers traveling to and from the work place. The second part of the Tuesday session will focus on telecommuting promotion and policy development, in particular the need to include both public- and private-sector goals. The Transportation Research Board was organized in 1920 to advance the knowledge of the nature and performance of transportation systems, and the interaction with society through the stimulation of research and dissemination of the information resulting from research. It is a cooperative organization of professionals from government, industry and academia and is a unit of the National Academy of Sciences. The 75th annual Transportation Research Board meeting convened in Washington, D.C., at 8 a.m. Sunday, Jan. 7, and concludes at 5 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 11.