Evidence from the TRANSAS longitudinal panel (2020–2025)
Half of those in employment now work from home (WFH) at least occasionally, a study for the RAC Foundation has found. WFH rose during the pandemic and has remained at the current levels since mid-2022.
That is one of the conclusions of Working from home and post-pandemic travel behaviour by Dr Llinos Brown and Professor Jillian Anable of the University of Leeds. The study was commissioned by the RAC Foundation.
The research is based on longitudinal data from the Transport, Travel and Social Adaptation Study 2020-25, established by the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. This followed the same people through seven survey waves between 2020 and 2025, allowing researchers to distinguish changes associated with working from home from those caused by changing jobs, moving workplace or moving house – a distinction that most one-off surveys cannot make.
Fewer commutes can mean longer commutes
The longer the commute to the place of employment, the more time is spent working from home.
For those who spend at least some time working from home and live within a five-mile commute of ‘the office’ just over one in five days is spent WFH.
For those who are at least 100 miles from their place of employment the number of WFH days averages almost three per week.
The most frequent homeworkers showed the clearest shift over the five year period: their average commute time rose from about 25 minutes before the pandemic to nearly 40 minutes in July 2025.
WFH means more public transport
Those working from home most frequently also used public transport more on the days they travelled. The longer the commute the more likely it is to be carried out by public transport, particularly on the railway.
In 2025, 18% of people working from home at least three days a week mainly commuted by train, compared with 4% of people who never worked from home.
This combination – fewer journeys, but longer and more expensive ones – creates a different market for rail and urban public transport. It also helps explain why 20% of those who had increased their homeworking had stopped buying a season ticket.
A new weekly peak – and a less predictable daily one
Working from home has not simply taken commuting trips off the transport network. It has 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, 35.5% of hybrid workers said they sometimes worked part of the same day at home and part in the workplace. Around 30% expected to have no days spent exclusively at their workplace. These patterns can reduce conventional peak-hour travel, but they do not necessarily eliminate the journey. Instead, they make demand more fluid and harder for operators to predict across the day.
Homeworking is not, on its own, a route out of car dependence
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 there has been an overall reduction in the frequency of trips across all modes of transport (except walking) by the whole population since the start of the pandemic this is not particularly associated with people who WFH.
The report authors say that the fall in the number of trips is associated with wider behavioural changes in society:
“Overall, individuals were engaging less frequently in physical shopping, exercise and in-person social activities than they did pre–pandemic.”
The authors go on to note:
“While WFH is associated with lower levels of car commuting, it does not appear to be linked to lower levels of car ownership. 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.”
