Riding laptops
to work
Candidates
should back unsubsidized traffic reduction
By Ted Balaker, Guest Columnist to Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn and City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa are
sure to break out some great rhetoric about reducing the city's epic traffic
jams as we lead up to their runoff sequel. We've heard it before.
Every election, politicians promise to reduce traffic, which nevertheless
gets worse. Lawmakers say if more of us would just get out of our cars,
traffic wouldn't be so bad. They've tried everything, they say, to pry us
from our sport utility vehicles -- from rail transit to "walkable"
neighborhoods to car pooling, which is, itself, a partial concession to the
car's dominance.
Yet nothing seems to work.
In its share of work trips, transit continues to slide, as does walking, and
despite the nation's most extensive car-pool lanes system, car pooling
continues to drop. But some good news has squeezed through the L.A. gridlock
-- telecommuting.
Other than driving alone, telecommuting is the only commuter mode to
increase since 1980. And, as the city with the nation's worst traffic
prepares for another election, we should note what could be done to spur
greater telecommuting growth.
Of course, when compared against driving alone, telecommuting's share of
work trips is still small. But that shouldn't undermine our optimism.
Telecommuting will never be the solution, but it is a solution, especially
if cost-effectiveness is thrown into the mix.
Despite hefty public subsidies, transit's share of work trips in the L.A.
metro area has dipped slightly since 1980, and it now stands at about 5
percent. Meanwhile, telecommuting has more than doubled. Right now,
telecommuting is only 1 percentage point behind transit and costs taxpayers
nothing. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, on the other hand,
spends nearly $3 billion of taxpayer money per year.
Bang for your buck? Telecommuters already outnumber rail commuters, and if
current trends continue, soon telecommuting will top bus and rail commuting
combined.
Instead of throwing more taxpayer money at failed transit projects, as both
mayoral candidates seem intent on doing, they should encourage businesses to
embrace telecommuting. As broadband connections increase market share and
the price of computers and laptops continues to fall, telecommuting will
become a viable option for an increasing number of companies and workers.
In the past, some managers viewed telecommuters as low-grade scammers,
loafing at home when they should be working in the office. Yet evidence
suggests that home-based workers are actually more productive than their
office-bound counterparts. A survey of American Express tele-workers found
that they produced 43 percent more business than office workers.
Lower costs typically accompany higher productivity. Since workers on the
brink of illness can stay home, absenteeism costs and colds don't ravage
companies. Telecommuters save AT&T $25 million per year in real-estate
costs, and the company's managers report that telecommuting helps them
attract and retain good employees. Once companies realize that telecommuting
can boost their bottom line, more will allow their employees to stay home.
It's difficult to quantify how much congestion relief increased
telecommuting would bring Los Angeles, but a George Mason University
analysis of Washington, D.C., commuting found that traffic delays would drop
by 10 percent for every 3 percent of commuters who work at home.
And telecommuting's benefits cut across many seemingly unrelated policy
areas. Since it is zero-emissions "transportation," telecommuting helps
clean the air. It also helps to reduce highway fatalities and to increase
family time. Since telecommuters cost companies less than office workers, "homesourcing"
offers an alternative to offshore outsourcing. Working at home also makes it
easier for the handicapped to hold a job.
Telecommuting is growing even though hostile policies, such as local zoning
ordinances against home-based businesses, try to suppress it. Since
home-business owners and telecommuters rarely agitate as the type of
organized interest group that gets political attention, laws that hamper
working at home often lurk in relative obscurity. The next mayor should
squash all barriers to telecommuting. More and more of us can get to work
simply by traveling from our beds to our dens, and politics shouldn't clog
that commute.
Ted Balaker is the Jacobs Fellow at the Reason Foundation and author of a
forthcoming study on telecommuting. Write to him by e-mail at Ted.Balaker@Reason.org.
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