Second Boston Globe article on mobility is on corporate transportation demand management programs

-- "Seeing Red: Free parking perks are feeding Boston's traffic nightmare"

The article makes a simple but powerful point: when company mobility benefits programs provide more support for the car, or equal support for transit or driving, people will choose to drive.

Some of Boston’s biggest employers do offer significant transit subsidies, and those that have the biggest impact on commuting behavior typically amount to at least 50 percent of the cost of a transit pass. ...

But research shows a generous subsidy for transit can be undermined by one for parking. Take the pharmaceutical giant Sanofi, which subsidizes an impressive 60 percent of the cost of public transit for its Cambridge employees. Sanofi offers an even higher subsidy — a discount of 88 percent — on parking. Not surprisingly, about two-thirds of its approximately 1,750 Cambridge employees drive to work. ...

If Boston-area companies’ efforts to reduce congestion remain generally lackluster, it may be because they aren’t trying to shape transportation choices as much as attract and retain star employees. ...

Another factor in the inertia: Companies can get away with it. Effective city and state regulation is largely absent.

Programs that preference transit, and even penalize driving, result in significantly higher use of sustainable modes.

For example, Liberty Mutual doesn't provide any commuter benefits for solo driving.  As a result, 60% of workers use transit, while only up to 8% of workers drive.

MIT reconfigured its TDM programs to provide 100% coverage for subway and bus, 60% for commuter rail, 50% of the cost of parking at commuter rails stations, but no benefits for driving, other than capping the cost for parking at $1,760 per year.

The result was that over time, there was a 12% reduction in parking demand, and MIT tore down a parking structure and replaced it with a dorm.  (Similarly, the free bike program for freshman students at Ripon College was motivated by a desire to reduce the amount of campus land used for parking.)

-- "Driving Change: How Workplace Benefits Can Nudge Solo Car Commuters Toward Sustainable Modes," Adam Rosenfeld, MIT masters thesis, 2018

When the Boston Globe moved to a location with no on-site parking, the number of people using transit doubled.

Other recommendations:

(1) Cities need to preference mobility management in building regulation practices.  In the Boston area, Cambridge is the leader, while Boston is a laggard.

12 years ago I was really influenced by this article, "The ABC of Dutch Location Policy: Lessons in Logic," European Spatial Research and Policy, which discusses how in the Netherlands use approvals are linked to the ability of particular places to satisfy transportation demand based on pre-existing infrastructure.

(2) Rebrand transit and market it more forcefully.