• telecommuting (i.e. eliminating the commute trip at least some days per week by working at or nearer to home)
• other forms of teleworking (eliminating trips by teleworking between sites – whether fixed, mobile or from client sites)
• online financial services such as home banking
• online shopping
• online entertainment services
• online learning.

This is of course at odds with the DETR’s projections of traffic increase, but those are based on the continuation of existing trends, rather than wholesale changes in consuming and working practices enabled by ICT.

While the future remains volatile and unpredictable, employers and organisations have choices to make, and the sum total of those choices will influence the type of society we create. Those choices, in how work is organised, how services are delivered, can be more or less sustainable. Employers and public agencies can keep an eye on the "environmental bottom line" - asking, "is this activity sustainable or not?"

The prevailing preference for a green field edge-of-town location with copious car-parking can build in business inefficiencies and is unsustainable in environmental terms.

However, in deciding the amount of land available for development, increasingly outdated criteria are used which assume a certain ratio between floorspace and numbers of employees, likely traffic generation and impact on amenity. The models used are factory- and traditional office-based.

The various agencies involved in local economic development can combine an emphasis on sustainability with an emphasis on high tech high value inward investment.

However, in some areas LA21 policy is being developed to encourage working nearer to home and travel reduction. Promoting teleworking has a role to play in this regard.

Further projections for the city as a whole showed reduction in commute of up to 8 million miles.

These areas have little intrinsically in common, apart from a need to bring in work from outside to the local population, and a will on the part of the authorities to project a high technology and progressive image for the area. In the case of the Highlands and Islands part of the imperative is the need to regenerate rural communities by bringing in real work opportunities, while in the case of Amsterdam urban regeneration is given an electronic focus, with a particular focus on call centres. Bringing work to rural areas without building factories, and reusing urban industrial land are two examples of ICT being used for sustainable economic development.

In addition, South Cambridgeshire planners see teleworking as offering one way forward for regenerating local communities. Here the problem is not remoteness, but accessibility. Most settlements are dominated by people who commute to London, or nearby towns. Having more people working at or near home during the day will help revitalise local services, as the spending of former commuters is "repatriated" to the local village or small town.

Working online can be promoted as much as an environmental initiative as an efficiency one.

Increasingly such groups (as in Nottinghamshire and Cambridgeshire) are adding in teleworking/telecommuting as environmentally-friendly work options. The research that goes into measuring travel-to-work distances highlights the amount of national resources consumed in travelling to work

At present the balance of evidence would indicate it is appropriate to promote ICT enabled work as a contributor to sustainability, while employing measures to restrict possible increases in demand from non-teleworkers.

By comparison, the extra energy required in the home for teleworking is small. Realising the business and energy reduction benefit, however, depends on not retaining office spaces for people working from home, or people who are regularly out of the office.

The contribution of such services to traffic reduction is difficult to measure. A report commissioned by the RAC in 1997 predicted that by 2007 new communications will cut shopping travel by about 17%.

Similarly, new phenomena such as online shopping will not necessarily lead to a decline in "going to the shops": both sectors could grow simultaneously and indeed the growth of online activities can be used to promote traditional forms of commerce. The upshot may be that people will travel more, not less, in some areas of activity.

Given that public enthusiasm for alternatives to the car (public transport, cycling, walking) tends to be limited by the perceived inconvenience involved, transport substitution is likely to have increasing appeal.

Much, however needs to be done to raise awareness of the issues and possibilities amongst employers and employees, and amongst planners and policy makers.

A particular challenge will be in extending the infrastructure into areas that telecoms companies will regard as less attractive. In these areas (e.g. more remote areas, areas with smaller populations, areas with no cable franchise and therefore no effective competition) the initiative will fall to public bodies to develop provision.

• reducing work trips by n by the year x, or reducing in-work travel by n% per year
• analysing the number of workers who could work from home, for how much of the time, and set targets for the phased introduction of new ways of working in the organisation
• setting targets for moving towards the "paperless office" – n% of paper transactions to become electronic by the year x.

A recent project Telecommuting 2000 supported by Symantec and Mitel and conducted by the Home Office Partnership looked at the possibilities of reducing traffic through telecommuting. Information on the project can be found at www.flexibility.co.uk/telecommuting2000