A new five-year study from the RAC Foundation has revealed that shedworking and homeworking in general is reshaping people's commute.
In 'Working from Home and Post-Pandemic Travel Behaviour', Dr Llinos Brown and Professor Jillian Anable of the University of Leeds show that those working from home most frequently use public transport more on the days they travel.
Moreover, the new ways of working have created a new pattern of longer, less frequent and more rail-oriented commutes, concentrated in the middle of the week and increasingly undertaken as part of split working days. Among people who worked from home at least one day a week in 2025, Tuesday and Wednesday were the most common workplace days, while Friday was by far the least common. The result is a transport week with demand concentrated from Tuesday to Thursday and flatter peaks on Mondays and Fridays.
At the same time, a third of hybrid workers said they sometimes worked part of the same day at home and part in the workplace. According to the report's authors, these patterns can reduce conventional peak-hour travel, but do not necessarily eliminate the journey. Instead, they make demand more fluid and harder for operators to predict across the day.
The central finding is that the ‘hybrid’ pattern of working some days from home and some in the workplace is reorganising the commute but having much less influence on non-work travel, shopping, exercise, social activity or household car ownership.
“While WFH is associated with lower levels of car commuting, it does not appear to be linked to lower levels of car ownership," says the report. "This is somewhat unexpected, as reduced commuting might be expected to reduce the need to own a car. Instead, households appear to retain vehicles even when commuting becomes less frequent, highlighting the role of non-work travel needs in car ownership and use.”
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “Working from home looks like an employment pattern that is here to stay for many jobs, but that of itself isn’t going to address our transport challenges.”
Professor Jillian Anable, co-author of the report, said: “The important story is not how many people now work at home, it is that hybrid working has changed the shape of demand on the transport system. We now have a more pronounced midweek peak, more split-days, and less predictable journey patterns, and a group of workers travelling less often but over longer distances and with greater reliance on rail.
“That means homeworking should not be treated as a simple substitute for transport policy – it may reduce some driving, but it does not by itself reduce car ownership or most non-work travel. Operators and policymakers need to plan for a different pattern of demand, not assume that demand has disappeared.”
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