Speaker: Sandra Rosenbloom, Ph.D., Director, Drachman Institute of Land and Regional Development Studies, Professor of Planning, University of Arizona

Travel Demand Management (TDM) strategies are rapidly becoming major components of state and regional transportation programs in the 1990s. Many regions are implementing mandatory TDM programs in response to provisions of the lntermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA). TDM and Traffic Control Measure (TCM) programs are employer-based strategies designed to reduce air pollution, energy consumption, and traffic congestion by 1) including or forcing workers to reduce the number of vehicles they drive alone to work by changing to alternative modes like carpools, transit, biking, and walking, or, 2) directly reducing the total number of work trips by either shortening the work week or using communications to substitute for the presence of the worker in the office. The TDM measures chosen as part of those programs can include incentives, such as free transit passes or preferential parking for carpoolers, or sanctions, such as charging for formerly free parking or implementing work schedule changes.

A growing body of international research strongly suggests that workingwomen with children may be disproportionately impacted by TDM measures which impose additional constraints on their already restricted choices. Many working mothers have different travel patterns than their spouses because they retain childcare and domestic responsibilities when they enter the paid force; the patterns of single mothers are far more constrained because they have little help with their domestic responsibilities.

Dr. Sandra Rosenbloom has studied the travel patterns of workingwomen in the United States and Western Europe for over a decade. She is currently the Principal Investigator on a major U.S. Department of Labor study of the impact of TDM measures on workingwomen with children. That study questions whether TDM programs unfairly impact women workers and attempts to evaluate how they can be changed so that working mothers do not bear an unfair portion of the nation's fight against pollution and energy consumption. Dr. Rosenbloom is the Director of the Drachrnan Institute of Land and Regional Development Studies of the University of Arizona and Professor of Planning.