The Debate Over Telecommuting (Reprinted with permission from the August 19, 1999 issue of INTERSECT, published by the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities. For more information contact WRN at (202)667-5445, fax (202) 667-4491, or e-mail editor Deborah Katz . Ironically, many workers leave homes equipped with a computer and fight rush-hour traffic prior to settling down in front of their computer terminal at work. In a proposal modeled after national credit trading program designed to cut acid rain emissions by coal-burning utility plants, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has introduced legislation to give companies pollution credits if they let their employees work from home. The companies would be free to buy and sell the credits in deals with other businesses and nonprofit groups. Proponents say such a measure would help the Washington region meet smog-reduction goals set by federal clean air laws and reduce traffic congestion. And according to a recent survey of local businesses by the regional Council of Governments (COG), telecommuting produced happier and more productive employees, fewer cars on the roads during rush hours, and business cost savings as high as $700,000 for one company. The International Telework Association estimates 60 percent of area residents have jobs conducive to telecommuting. Officials estimate that currently 5 percent of the region's 2.6 million workers telecommute. While telecommuting helps reduce rush-hour demand for roads, it could possibly lead to more local trips of greater distances by enabling people to live farther from where they work. Also, telecommuting does not address the 75% of auto travel in our region that is not home-to-work related. John Niles, a smart growth consultant and presenter at the American Planning Association conference earlier this year in Seattle, believes that telecommunications promote sprawl by increasing a household's tolerance for distance. He points to several studies of telecommuters that have yielded the finding that telecommuters tend to live farther away from their employer's office than non-telecommuters. From a worker's rights perspective, telecommuting can enable employers to shift the cost for office space and equipment to their employees and to expect employees to work longer hours. These may be choices employees are willing to make, however, for the convenience of working from home. Perhaps an alternative to pollution credits for telecommuting could be providing such credits for employees who choose to live close to work or a Metro station. Balanced development, with housing, jobs, schools, shopping and recreation in close proximity to one another and a Metro station, can help eliminate the need to use a car for many activities. These mixed-use neighborhoods should be zoned for home-based businesses. ______________________________ Telecommunications and Sprawl (Reprinted with permission from the September 8, 1999 issue of INTERSECT, published by the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities.) By Ed Risse, SYNERGY/Planning, Inc. (Call (703) 968-4300, fax (703) 968-4304, e-mail <73361.2275@compuserve.com> ) The August 19th issue of Intersect included a discussion of the potential impact of telecommuting on quality of life in our region. As Intersect readers may know, SYNERGY/Planning, Inc. has been an advocate of the intelligent use of telecommunications to create quality communities since 1969. This brief article provides perspective on the issue of telecommuting and telework in the context of smart growth in the National Capital Region. "Telecommuting" usually refers to employees who work from home or a satellite center from one to three days a week. "Telework" is a larger term encompassing all activities using computers and telecommunications in running a business, including telecommuting, operating a home-based business, shopping or banking online, etc. In a nutshell, both the positive and negative impacts suggested in the August 19th Intersect column are possible from telework. The deciding factor is citizen awareness of what constitutes a functional human settlement pattern and the degree to which this awareness is reflected in the built environment. If citizens understand the need for functional human settlement pattern, telework can be used to improve economic prosperity, social stability and environmental sustainability. Moving work to people rather than people to work is a great idea if that flexibility allows a citizen to live, work and seek services and recreation all in the same great community. However, if citizens do not grasp the importance of viable patterns and densities of land use at the community and regional level, then telework can have the opposite impact by scattering land uses in non-viable locations. If telework results in more scattered jobs, housing, services, recreation with little or no amenity, it is bad for communities and the region. Ultimately, it is bad for families too. For years, SYNERGY/Planning, Inc. argued that the technological efficiency of telework was a good way to maintain regional competitiveness in face of countries where human settlement patterns were, and still are, more efficient than those of the U.S. Telework could help the U.S. remain competitive while citizens and their enterprises, institutions, and agencies transitioned from dysfunctional to functional human settlement patterns. By 1995, the techniques of telework had become ubiquitous in the U.S. workplace. Many at the top of the economic food chain now apply telework on a regular basis to both their own lives and that of their enterprise. However, telework was not meant to be the end goal in itself, divorced from the concept of functional human settlement pattern. Nevertheless, there are thousands of causes, products, and services that do just this, with the most recent adherent, a business group calling itself "REGION," suggesting that telework is one of ten solutions to regional gridlock. Telework has become less a means of promoting U.S. competitiveness and quality communities than a way to blind ourselves to the underlying inefficiencies of our human settlement pattern. Telecommuting has morphed to become a political favorite and a sales tool for telecommunications hardware, software, and services. Most of the enterprises touting telecommuting are selling something. In any case, the potential efficiencies of telework have been eclipsed by other, larger forces. In this region, one such force is the decision by high-tech firms and universities to purchase cheap land in outlying areas for their office complexes and campuses. They now need the public to subsidize roads and services for their employees or their foray into the development arena will be disastrous. Their inappropriate location decisions drive far more bad housing location decisions than does telework, with its ability to let people live and work far from their employers. All one has to do is chat with sales staff for new developments in Leesburg, Warrenton, eastern Loudoun and western Prince William counties. One of the major sales pitches is that Worldcom and AOL are "just down the road." In fact, many people are willing to live up to 45 minutes from where they work. Under these circumstances, claims by REGION and others that "we don't need to worry about growth; we've got telework" can hinder constructive efforts to create quality communities. In sum, while telework can be a good thing for individuals and enterprises, it can have major downsides, not the least of which is more costly - and uncompetitive - human settlement patterns. Telework in a vacuum of sustainable land use and transportation planning is not a solution to traffic gridlock or to increasing regional competitiveness.