More Telecommuting- Less Asphalt

Here is an article talking about the future of telecommuting, or what the author sees as a vision. Worth a quick read.

Your Success Is Our Success.

Toni
Telecommutingpro

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Spread universal broadband access, not asphalt
October 28, 2007

Broadband. Telecommuting. Taming our roaring highways instead of multiplying them. Walking or cycling to work. Less tension, better health. "Work to live, not live to work."

Could all those values come together?

Put your ear to the ground, and you can hear other voices, especially in new technologies, suggesting a less frenetic lifestyle in a nation clearly confounded by congestion, obesity, energy consumption, global warming and air quality issues.

Biggest on the technology side: broadband Internet connection. Broadband is usually sold for its economic promise; backers now claim that a robust, border-to-border U.S. broadband network would generate up to 1.2 million new jobs.

President Bush in 2004 announced a national goal that by this year, we'd be "ranked first when it comes to per-capita use of broadband technology." The United States was then 10th; today it's actually 15th. Many regions remain limited to dial-up service or such slow and unreliable broadband that critics call it "fraudband."

Yet expanding our broadband penetration to the levels of leading European and Asian nations, Leo Hindery of InterMedia Partners told a recent Brookings Institution forum, would "translate into a half-trillion dollars of economic activity."

New uses keep emerging for broadband service, now the world's premier messaging, data source, business, entertainment and video transmitter, and with voice services, a growing competitor to standard telephone lines. With broadband, medical images can be flashed long distances to save lives, schools can be smaller but still receive top-level instruction, images and communications for homeland security are faster ... and the list keeps growing.

But there's de facto "redlining" of geographically remote or poor areas by the "duopoly" of telephone and cable companies –– a modern-day version of early 20th-century corporate foot-dragging in delivering telephone and electric service to rural America.

Massachusetts, for example, has 32 towns with no broadband at all, 63 with limited service areas. "We are creating a new kind of ghetto," according to Don Dubendorf, president of Berkshire Connect, a high-speed Internet advocate and negotiator. "It's morally wrong. It's stupid economically, it's dangerous from a health point of view, it's absurd from a public education point of view."

Enter then the broadband-transportation link. Fast, reliable Internet connection makes telecommuting far more feasible –– to transfer files, worksheets and video clips, access company databases, create videoconferences and more. But "telework" can't function well when employees don't have broadband access. Simple equation: Universal broadband equals increased telecommuting, which in turn means less roadway demand, fewer greenhouse gas emissions and less pollution. Even if a worker telecommutes a day or two a week, it can make a real difference.

Which raises a thorny question: How many new super-road lanes do we need on our highways, anyway? None at all if they raise greenhouse gas emissions, says King County (Seattle) Executive Ron Sims. Sims is opposing a popular proposal on this fall's ballot –– $17 billion for a combination of new roads and rail transit in the central Puget Sound region. No good, says Sims –– the overall package raises the area's carbon dioxide emissions by 18 million to 28 million tons over the next 50 years.

Overall reduction of auto use is the challenge, says Sims, which means growth limits –– tighter, more dense communities:

Sims' highway stand is collaborated by Todd Litman of the Victoria Transport Institute. Expanded freeways, Litman notes, may cut congestion delays in the short run. But in a few years, congestion generally returns to its earlier level through "induced travel" –– more thousands of drivers flooding into roadways they perceive as less crowded.

An alternative, says Sims: remote work centers, telecommuting, commuting in off hours, "an array of things so people have a life."

No one should have to commute more than a half-hour from home, Sims suggests. That translates too into time for a mix of exercise and sociability, walking and biking and talking with neighbors –– which reasonably compact communities make easier: "We want to tell people, you don't live to work, you work to live."

Heresy in fast-go, roaring-roadway, sprawling America? Maybe so. But let's pause to give it a careful look before we embrace urgent appeals for fresh asphalt.