UnSound Transit: 8.6 Telecommuting

The phrase,'Unsound Transit', was coined by the Wall Street Journal to describe Seattle where,"Light Rail Madness eats billions that could otherwise be devoted to truly efficient transportation technologies." The Puget Sound's traffic congestion is a growing cancer on the region's prosperity. This website, captures news and expert opinion about ways to address the crisis. This is not a blog, but a knowledge base, which collects the best articles and presents them in a searchable format. My goal is to arm residents with knowledge so they can champion fact-based, rather than emotional, solutions.

Showing posts with label 8.6 Telecommuting. Show all posts

Monday, March 10, 2008

Amgen pays employees to leave their cars at home

Paid for not taking the car to work
Region's best job sites for commuters listed

By ANDREA JAMES
P-I REPORTER

Even on Seattle's drizzliest, chilliest mornings, Daniel Hirschstein leaves his new sports car in the garage and pedals through train yards and past petroleum tanks down a narrow industrial path to his lab at Amgen Inc.

COMMUTING HABITS

SeattlePI.com has asked readers periodically about their commute-to-work habits through the "daily poll" feature on the home page. Results are not scientific:
- Oct. 18, 2006
- March 7, 2002
- May 18, 2001

"I think that there's too many cars on the road as it is," said the 47-year-old research scientist. "I just came back from L.A., and believe me, I'd hate to see our city turn into something like that, traffic-wise."

His company agrees. That's why every time Hirschstein swings his leg over the bicycle saddle, the biotechnology firm pays him to do it.

Amgen, along with 248 other Puget Sound-area employers, was named a best workplace for commuters today by a coalition led by the Environmental Protection Agency, local non-profits and transit organizations.

Joe Parsons, who cycles to work at Amgen from his home on Capitol Hill, puts his bike away in the garage. A coalition of business and government organizations is releasing the first annual list of the Puget Sound's Best Workplaces for Commuters. The list spotlights 249 employers and two districts offering superior commuter benefits to 449,600 employees in the Puget Sound area.

The coalition wants benefits such as bus passes and free ferry rides to become as common as health insurance and 401(k) accounts.

Three-quarters of Seattle-area commuters, or 1.13 million people, drove to work alone last year, according to the Census Bureau. If Seattle's population grows as predicted, more than 25,000 extra parking spaces will be needed downtown in the next quarter century, said Steve Gerritson, executive director of Commuter Challenge, a Seattle-based non-profit and coalition member.

"That just isn't going to happen. We don't have the space," he said. "We really have to make some effort here to get people out of their cars."

Amgen spends slightly more than $1 million per year encouraging the 800 employees at its Interbay campus and 200 in Bothell to bike, car pool, take the bus or share a van. That averages $1,000 per employee. The company provides a smorgasbord of free commuter goodies: showers and lockers, onsite bike tune-ups, two bike shelters, ferry and bus rides, emergency cab rides, Flexcars for trips to the dentist and meetings, and a shuttle every 15 minutes to downtown.

The company gives $50 gift certificates monthly to everyone who bikes, walks or is dropped off. They are redeemable at various stores, including outdoor gear retailer REI. Car poolers get $25 gift certificates. "People love that REI one," said Amgen spokeswoman Carol Pawlak. "Seattle certainly has a traffic problem and this is a way around it."

Meanwhile, employees who drive pay $65 a month to park. As a result, two-thirds arrive at work via some method other than driving alone, and 10 percent ride bikes, says Jan Law, who works full time as Amgen's employee transportation coordinator.

Fewer than 1 percent of corporations nationwide qualify as a best workplace for commuters, according to the EPA, which has previously ranked Fortune 500 companies but today recognized Puget Sound employers specifically for the first time.

Microsoft, Boeing, Starbucks and the cities of Issaquah, Redmond, Renton and Tukwila made the list. Seattle did not.

"If you just want to look at our core downtown businesses, we would be on it," said Gregg Hirakawa, spokesman for Seattle's Department of Transportation. But many people who work in the city's outlying field offices keep irregular hours and must drive, he said.

To qualify for the list, a business must:

# Employ someone to tell employees about commuter benefits.

# Provide a way for employees to get home in an emergency.

# Offer a key commuter benefit, such as a monthly transit subsidy or a telecommuting program.

# Offer at least three supporting benefits, such as incentives, showers or dry cleaning.

Also, at least 14 percent of employees must participate, says Puget Sound's Best Workplaces for Commuters Coalition.

"You can't force your employees to take the bus or to car pool," Commuter Challenge's Gerritson said. "They may be in locations where public transport doesn't operate."

About 12 percent of Puget Sound's work force car pools and about 23 percent of King County companies have telework programs allowing employees to work from home a couple of times per month, Gerritson said.

It's hard to get people out of cars because they equate wheels with necessity, Gerritson said. Immigrants seem to be leading the change in commuting habits nationally, representing 40 percent of people in large car pools, according to a report this week by The National Academies.

While not every company can afford $1,000 per head like Amgen, even minor benefits have big impacts on the number of cars on the road, Gerritson said. For example, if every company in Puget Sound allowed employees to telecommute one day per week, traffic would drop approximately 20 percent, he said.

Smaller businesses can buy FlexPasses from the Urban Mobility Group, a non-profit run by the Downtown Seattle Association, King County Metro and the city of Seattle. More than 160 small downtown businesses have purchased the passes, said Carrie Blanco, the group's director.

The cost is $285 per year per employee and businesses must buy one for every full-time employee, or none at all, she said.

As an incentive for businesses, the federal and state governments offer tax deductions for transit subsidies. But many Seattle-area businesses and commuters don't shun cars to enhance the bottom line, said Janis Hastings, an associate director in EPA's Seattle regional office.

"People look beyond the fact that it's saving them money here," she said. "Hopefully people are connecting it with saving the environment."

BEST WORKPLACES FOR COMMUTERS

The best workplaces for commuters, according to Puget Sound’s Best Workplaces for Commuters Coalition:

4culture, Seattle
5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle
Advanced Computer Solutions Ltd., Seattle
Aetna, Seattle
Alaska Airlines, Seattle
Alliance Data Systems, Seattle
American Heart Association, Seattle
Amgen, Seattle
Amicus Law Group,PC, Seattle
Anchor Environmental, LLC, Seattle
AttachmateWRQ, Seattle
Attenex Corp., Seattle
Badgley Phelps & Bell, Seattle
Badgley-Mullins Law Group,PLLC, Seattle
Barry Kaimakis DDS, Seattle
Benefit Administation Co., Seattle
Berger/Abam Engineers Inc., Seattle
BHC Consultants, Seattle
Black Lowe & Graham,PLLC, Seattle
Blue Frog Mobile, Seattle
Brown and Caldwell, Seattle
Building Owners and Managers Association, Seattle
Callison Architecture Inc., Seattle
Cancer Research & Biostatistics, Seattle
Capital One, Federal Way
Carter and Burgess, Seattle
Cascade Land Conservancy, Seattle
Cascade Natural Gas Corp., Seattle
Cascadia Law Group, Seattle
CB Richard Ellis, Seattle
CBRE Melody, Seattle
Century Square, Seattle
Chef’n, Seattle
Chicago Title Insurance Co., Seattle
Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center, Seattle
Christensen O’Connor Johnson Kindness PLLC, Seattle
Cigna, Seattle
City of Bellevue
City of Issaquah
City of Redmond
City of Renton
City of Tacoma - Public Works/Environmental Services
City of Tukwila
Clausen Law Firm PLLC, Seattle
ClearPoint, Seattle
CleverSet Inc., Seattle
Coldwater Creek, Seattle
Collins Woerman, Seattle
Columbia Bank, Seattle
Columbia Tower Club, Seattle
Commerce Bank of Washington, Seattle
Community Transit, Everett
Continental Reporting Service Inc., Seattle
Corr Cronin Baumgardner & Preece LLP, Seattle
Cosse International Securities, Seattle
Coughlin Porter Lundeen, Seattle
Cowan Miller & Lederman, Seattle
Crowne Plaza Hotel, Seattle
DiMartino Associates, Seattle
Discovery Institute, Seattle
DKS Associates, Seattle
Downtown Seattle Association, Seattle
Dr. Kegel’s Office, Seattle
Easter Seals Little Eagles, Seattle
Ecology & Environment Inc., Seattle
Eddie Bauer, Redmond
Ederer Investment Co., Seattle
EDS, Federal Way
Entranco Inc., Bellevue
EnviroIssues, Seattle
eProject, Seattle
ERA Care Communities, Seattle
EvergreenBank, Seattle
Exbiblio, Seattle
Expedia Inc., Bellevue
Federal Aviation Administration - Northwest Mountain Region, Renton
FileNet Corp., Kirkland
Financial Security Group, Seattle
First Choice Health, Seattle
Flexcar - Seattle, Seattle
Foote Cone & Belding, Seattle
Fox’s Gem Shop, Seattle
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle
Frontier Bank, Seattle
Genie Industries, Redmond
Genworth Financial, Seattle
Geomatrix Consultants Inc., Seattle
Global Energy Concepts, LLC, Seattle
GM Nameplate, Seattle
Goodrich Aviation Technical Services Inc., Everett
Gordon & Polscer, L.L.C., Seattle
Greater Redmond TMA, Redmond
Green Tree Childcare Center, Seattle
Greenfield Advisors LLC, Seattle
Group Health Cooperative, Seattle
Guido Perla Associates, Seattle
Hamlin and Associates, Seattle
Harbor Properties, Seattle
Harborview Medical Center, Seattle
Heller Ehrman LLP, Seattle
Heritage House at the Market, Seattle
Hewitt Architects, Seattle
Holland America Line, Seattle
Honeywell, Redmond
Integrated Benefits, Seattle
Intel Corp., DuPont
Intercontinental Insurance Services, Seattle
Jones & Jones Architects & Landscape Architects Ltd., Seattle
Joshua Green Corp., Seattle
Kinetic Books, Seattle
King County Bar Association, Seattle
Korry Electronics, Seattle
KPFF Consulting Engineers, Seattle
Laidlaw Transit, Seattle
Laird Norton Tyee, Seattle
Legal Foundation of Washington, Seattle
LeGros Buchanan & Paul, Seattle
LeSourd & Patten, P.S., Seattle
Levy von Beck & Associates, P.S., Seattle
Linville Ursich, PLLC, Seattle
LMN Architects, Seattle
Makers Architecture and Urban Design, Seattle
Mattei Companies LLC, Seattle
McIntyre & Barns, PLLC, Seattle
Microsoft Corp., Redmond
Mikkelborg Broz Wells & Fryer, Seattle
Minor & James Medical Clinic, Seattle
Montgomery Purdue Blankinship & Austin,PLLC, Seattle
Morisset, Schlosser, Jozwiak & McGaw, Seattle
Nature Conservancy, Seattle
Neuhaus Chocolates, Seattle
Nielsen Shields PLLC, Seattle
Nintendo of America Inc., Redmond
Nordstrom Inc., Seattle
Northwest Airlines Inc., Seattle
Northwest Defenders Association, Seattle
Nyhus Communications LLC, Seattle
O’Connor Consulting Group, LLC, Seattle
Office Lease, Seattle
Ogden Murphy Wallace, PLLC, Seattle
OMD, Seattle
Open Interface North America, Seattle
Oracle Corp. USA, Bellevue
Otak, Seattle
Overlake Hospital Medical Center, Bellevue
PACCAR Inc., Bellevue
Paladino & Company Inc., Seattle
Par3 Communications, Seattle
Paragon Investment Management, Seattle
Parametrix Inc., Kirkland
Parker Services Inc., Seattle
Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc., Seattle
Patrick A. Fleege, DDS, Seattle
Philips Medical Systems/Philips Ultrasound, Bothell
Pierce Transit, Lakewood
Pogo Linux Inc., Seattle
Porter, Kohli & LeMaster, P.S., Seattle
Premera Blue Cross, Mountlake Terrace
Princess Tours, Seattle
ProBusiness Services of Washington, Bothell
Program for Appropriate Technology in Health - PATH, Seattle
PRR, Seattle
Puget Sound Business Journal, Seattle
Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, Seattle
Puget Sound Regional Council, Seattle
R.W. Beck, Seattle
RA Bench, Seattle
Rafel Manville, Seattle
REI, Kent
Ridolfi, Seattle
Rogers & Norman Inc., Seattle
Romax Inc., Seattle
Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting Ltd., Seattle
Russell Investment Group, Tacoma
Mellon Analytical Services, Tacoma
Safeco Insurance, Redmond
Sasquatch Books, Seattle
Savitt & Bruce LLP, Seattle
Schlosser Geographic Systems, Seattle
Seattle Biomedical Research Institute, Seattle
Seattle Chapter 13, Seattle
Seattle Infant Development Center, Seattle
Seattle Metropolitan Magazine, Seattle
Seattle-Northwest Securities Corp., Seattle
Security Properties, Seattle
Seed IP Law Group,PLLC, Seattle
Simpson Tacoma Kraft Co., Tacoma
SMR Architects, Seattle
Snohomish County, Everett
Soha & Lang, P.S., Seattle
Spacelabs Healthcare, Issaquah
Sparling, Seattle
Sprague Israel Giles Inc., Seattle
Starbucks Coffee Co., Seattle
State Farm Insurance, Dupont
Stevens Pass Ski Area, Skykomish
Stewart Title Guaranty, Seattle
Swedish Medical Center, Seattle
Symetra Financial, Bellevue
Tacoma Public Utilities, Tacoma
The Boeing Co., Everett
The Myers Associates, PC, Seattle
The Seattle Foundation, Seattle
Therapeutic Associates, Seattle
Thomas S. Maring MD, Seattle
TKG Consulting Engineers, Seattle
Trillium Publishing, Seattle
U. S. Bank, Seattle
U.S. Department of Labor, Seattle
U.S. EPA Region 10, Seattle
Unico Properties Inc., Seattle
University of Washington, Seattle
University Village, Seattle
USI Northwest, Seattle
UW Physicians Network, Seattle
Verdiem Corp., Seattle
Verizon - Washington, Everett
Verizon Wireless, Bellevue
Visions Northwest, Seattle
Vulcan Inc., Seattle
Wachovia LLC, Seattle
Washington Appellate Project, Seattle
Washington Capital Management, Seattle
Washington Community Reinvestment Association, Seattle
Washington Court of Appeals, Seattle
Washington Department of Social and Health Service, Seattle
Washington Mutual, Bothell
Washington Protection Advocacy System, Seattle
Washington State Attorney General’s Office, Seattle
Washington State Bar Association, Seattle
Washington State Department of Ecology, Olympia
Washington State Department of Human Rights Commission, Seattle
Washington State Department of Social & Health Services, Olympia
Washington State Department of Transportation, Olympia
Washington State Department of Transportation, Seattle
Washington State Department of Transportation, Tumwater
Wechsler Becker LLP, Seattle
Weyerhaeuser Co., Federal Way
WhitePages.com, Seattle
Widemile, Seattle
Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati PC, Seattle
Winterbauer & Diamond PLLC, Seattle
Wohlman & Toschi Inc., Seattle
Wurts & Associates, Seattle
Yarmuth Wilson Calfo, PLLC, Seattle
Zillow Inc., Seattle
Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership, Seattle
ZymoGenetics Inc., Seattle6

USDOT Presentation on Congestion Relief

Slow Growth in Telecommuting

Slow But Steady "Telework Revolution" Eyed 9/26/07
Matt Rosenberg

The nation and major urban regions within the West Coast Corridor of Cascadia and California - namely Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego - continue to grapple with costly road and transit projects and the threat of global warming. These stem in part from workforce and population increases. Against this backdrop, common-sense trip reduction strategies such as telecommuting deserve more attention. Adopted on a broader scale, increased telecommuting can: help control road congestion and future transportation infrastructure costs; and help limit man-made greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle-related air pollution.

A recently-released study by Tiax LLC of Cambridge, Mass. for the Consumer Electronics Association calculates that telecommuting - or to use a much better phrase, telework - saves 840 million gallons of gas in the U.S. annually and reduces carbon dioxide emissions by 14 million metric tons. But media reports and the study itself may actually underestimate both the number of current U.S. teleworkers (those who work from home or remote work centers at least eight hours a week) and their cumulative environmental benefit. Reports on the TIAX study by, for instance, the San Jose Mercury News and a Washington Post blogger assert that the study finds there are 3.9 million U.S. workers who telecommute (at least once a week). But the TIAX study itself casts the numbers in a clearer light. First, (p. 39, link above), the study's actual stated estimate of U.S. workers who telecommute at least once a week is 4 to 6 million, not 3.9 million. That's because (p. 40, link above) the U.S. Energy Information Administration 2001 estimate used as the source is not of 3.9 million once-a-week telecommuters, but rather translates, as Tiax notes, to 3.9 million households where at least one member telecommutes at least once a week.

Not mentioned anywhere in the recent media reports on the Tiax study is that the EIA data cited is from a six-year-old survey, and that using the same definition of what constitutes telework, other more recent estimates size the current U.S. teleworker pool as two to three times that in the Tiax study. April 2007 information from Gartner Dataquest highlighted earlier this month in an in-depth MSNBC.com story on telework is that currently, 12 million U.S. employees work from home at least eight hours per week; up from 6 million in 2000; and growing to 14 million by 2009. Percentage-wise that's still a drop in the bucket, but some assert that the trend grow. Rita Walston of The Telework Consortium tells MSNBC we should expect to see four-fifths of larger corporate workforces working out-of-office in the future, either from home or remote work centers. The MSNBC story also notes that 56 percent of Sun Microsystems' employees use home or remote work centers, resulting in information technology and real estate savings to the company of $387 million per year.

The amount of telework per worker per week is a key variable not fully addressed in the current discussion. If one day of telework out of five is feasible, why not two or three or more? To an extent it still depends on the employee and work team, and the product or service. But face it: for all the considerable upside of working on-site, there are also downsides. Put another way, there's a reason Dilbert rules.

Obvious barriers to telecommuting are lack of trust from employers, and personal disconnectedness for teleworkers perhaps coupled in some instances with legitimate fears their career advancement will be harmed by lack of time spent on in-person alliance-building and office politicking. The reality is that even for teleworkers, there are times when there is simply no substitute for being on-site. Remote work centers can often serve this purpose in larger organizations, but for smaller or mid-sized workplaces, flexible on-site work spaces for teleworkers can be important.

Government programs including financial incentives for employers and employees to increase their use of telework and other trip reduction methods such as carpooling are one approach currently in vogue. But if telework is to reach a more critical mass in coming decades, it will be more due to corporate and political leaders who connect the dots between telework, employee retention, the daunting costs of transportation infrastructure upgrades, and man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

Telecommunications, Telecommuting, and Travel

1/1/00 by John S. Niles

[This is a year 2000 update of an article of the same title from the March, 1994 issue of Public Innovation Abroad, a newsletter published by the International Center of the Academy for State and Local Government based in Washington, DC.]

Telecommuting has become an accepted way of working in the United States. It means people avoiding or shortening their commute by working at home or closer to home and using telecommunications to stay connected. The most typical kind of telecommuting is an office employee working no more than two days per week at home, and using the telephone and electronic mail to keep in touch with the office and external contacts such as customers. Access via modem or direct digital connection to employer computer resources is increasingly common.
Commuting into the office on most work days remains the normal practice for the majority of telecommuters. A US nationwide survey commissioned by the International Telework Association and Council indicates that telecommuting from home as of 1999 is at 19.6 million workers, about 10% of adults. According to another survey, about 27% of American households have members doing some work from home, including after hours. In Washington State, a survey of 450 businesses conducted in 1999 found 34% offering telecommuting as an option.
Companies such as AT&T, GTE, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, IBM, JC Penney, Sears, and U S WEST have formal telecommuting programs, as well as local, state, and federal government agencies. About eighty percent of telecommuting employees work for companies with fewer than 100 employees.
Formal, organized telecommuting programs are begun by organizations as a response to tight labor markets and opportunities to reduce office space requirements. Most telecommuting, however, is ad hoc, in response to employee requests for flexibility.
While at first glance telecommuting may seem alien to the normal corporate way of life, it is in fact a close relative of several familiar experiences:
bullet

For example, taking work home to do at night and on weekends. What salaried professional isn't already doing that weekly, if not daily?
bullet

Sales representatives in state and cities not big enough to support branch office are often asked to base their operations out of their homes and cars.
bullet

Field personnel at all levels (delivery drivers, repair technicians, inspectors, for example) have proven for years that people can work effectively without having a boss look over their shoulder.
bullet

Branch office personnel separated from the main office certainly have some of the characteristics of telecommuters.
bullet

Branch office and back offices such as computer operations have been relocating to the suburbs for years to get closer to customers, to employee's residences, and to less expensive facility space.
Telecommuting is usually set up as a voluntary arrangement that either the employee or the employer may break off if the pattern is unsatisfactory. Generally, both workers and their bosses report that work quantity and quality is improved by telecommuting. If work isn't done better, telecommuting can be stopped!
Although telecommuting is usually considered to be about where work activity happens -- places apart from the usual main office -- the more important impact is on time: First, telecommuting takes people out of wasteful commuting time. It also allows a more flexible and responsive balance of work time and personal time. Finally, it lets people work during the time of day when they are able to reach peak performance.
Telecommuting makes life a little easier for workers, and a little harder for managers and supervisors. Supervisors must establish new, intermittent, intentional communications patterns to take the place of the more continuous, casual patterns that are possible in the face-to-face office environment.
The traffic reduction yielded by telecommuting is small, and likely to remain small even with steady telecommuting growth. To the extent that telecommuting does leave unused rush hour space on congested roads, it will be partially filled in by other cars. Also, home-to-work commuting is a shrinking purpose for urban trips, and not even the majority share of afternoon rush hour traffic, as reported by the U.S. Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey and others. The projected impact of telecommuting on transportation demand over the next ten years, as calculated in 1993 by the U.S. Department of Transportation, amounts to a 2.3 to 4.5 percent reduction in commuting travel, and a 0.7 to 1.4 percent reduction in vehicle miles traveled.
These one time reductions are likely to be swamped by travel growth. Furthermore, telecommuting is a very small part of telecommunications. A much bigger concept than telecommuting is telework, which means any use of telecommunications that changes the location of where people do work. People who work at home all the time and never commute, people who work in their cars using cellular phones, and banks that relocate their computer centers from downtowns to suburbs are examples of telework that are not telecommuting.
However, telework, like telecommuting, changes commuting patterns. In fact, unlike telecommuting, telework may increase travel. For example, AT&T and IBM have been eliminating office space throughout the U.S. for many of their sales representatives. They now must work more at home and in their cars with portable computers and phones. These workers are then able to spend more time making sales calls at customer organizations. The travel effect of changes like these has not been studied, but should be.
Telework is only a part of a larger set of telecommunications-driven processes that are altering transportation demand across all trip purposes. Tele-services such as telephone shopping and cash machines change the location of customer activity analogous to how telework changes worker location.
Tele-logistics refers to the ways in which telecommunications changes the movement patterns of freight and goods. A prime example of tele-logistics is the system of radio- and computer-coordinated planes and trucks operated by Federal Express and its competitors.
Enormous and popular retail stores in suburban locations surrounded by huge parking lots, stores like Wal-Mart and Eagle, are another example of transportation impacts from expanding telecommunications. The low prices and stock availability in these stores are made possible by the satellite dishes on the roof and the telecommunicating computer systems that order and monitor the flow of goods from factories worldwide. Electronic shopping on the Internet is another example of telecommunications that will affect movement.
Research by Global Telematics has not yet detected a significant overall trend of telecommunications substitution for transportation. More research is needed. One possible underlying reason for lack of substitution is that telecommunications usage causes economic growth and productivity improvement, that in turn yields more income, profits, and wealth, some of which goes into personal and business travel even as telecommunications expands still further.
However, the balance between transportation and telecom may shift if transportation becomes noticeably more difficult or expensive. We know this happens if travel becomes impossible. Major disruptions of transportation during the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, the 1989 and 1994 California earthquakes, and assorted hurricanes and blizzards more recently illustrate that telecommunications can fill in for transportation and keep commerce partially operating at least on a temporary basis.
Transportation planners need to work with telecommunications analysts to understand how the lessons of these experiences can be applied to a future environment where transportation degrades gradually because of travel volume growth and lack of public infrastructure funding. Planning processes need to consider more strategically how the temporary substitution of telecommunications for transportation seen in one-time disasters and other disruptions can be made more permanent.
In conclusion, governments need to invest in research and education to enhance transportation policy makers' understanding of (1) how telecommunications changes the transportation patterns of evolving economies, including service delivery and goods movement, and (2) how telecommunications both generates and reduces travel at the same time.

John Niles is President of Global Telematics, a public policy consulting firm based in Seattle, Washington. He is a member of the Telecommunications and Travel Behavior Committee of the U.S. Transportation Research Board. He can be reached via e-mail at: niles@globaltelematics.com

Beyond Telecommuting (1994 Forecast)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1/1/94

Conventional wisdom holds that telecommunications is a natural substitute for transportation. Digital traffic on the fiber optic and wireless networks of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) can replace vehicle traffic on the streets and highways of the national transportation infrastructure. For example, telephone calls and videoconferencing can replace travel to meetings, and electronic-mail transmission of documents substitutes for postal delivery.

A leading example of travel substitution is telecommuting, which means using telecommunications to replace commuting between home and work. Telecommuting accounts for 7.6 million U.S. workers as of early 1993, up 15% from 6.6 million in 1992. The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) estimates that telecommuting by the year 2002 will reduce the annual total vehicle miles traveled (VMT) by just 1% below the level expected to be seen if there were no telecommuting. A follow-up study by the U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) calculates that the reduction in mileage from telecommuting by 2002 is likely to be even less because of (1) commuters living further from work, and (2) other travelers taking the road space vacated by telecommuters. However, telecommuting is not the only way that telecommunications can act as a substitute for transportation. Other examples of telecommunications substituting for travel include:

* Sporting, entertainment, political, religious, and other live events broadcast to a dispersed audience, rather than requiring that the audience travel to the event.

* Observations from scattered sites collected via remote sensing and transmitted to a central point, rather than sending a human observer.

* People initiating travel to a needed destination only after using telecommunications to find that the trip will be necessary or productive.

* Service transactions carried out by electronic means that require less travel. Such transactions include payroll direct deposits instead of taking paychecks to the bank, and electronic income tax filings.

* Dedicated telecommunications applications that increase vehicle loads and save trips by consolidating freight loads and expanding traveler ridesharing.

* Interactive educational, shopping, and entertainment services, and more television channels with movies on demand, that may convince more consumers to stay home rather than traveling to the mall or theater.

BEYOND TELECOMMUTING
Telecommuting is only a small part of a large and expanding set of processes that govern how the National Information Infrastructure makes an impact on transportation. Present and future NII applications in health care, public education, government, and manufacturing offer opportunities for general societal benefits that are more significant than travel savings.

* For example, an electronically-networked system of specialized national medical centers, regional hospitals, and smaller rural and neighborhood clinics can deliver appropriate levels of care (open-heart surgery, appendectomies, or immunizations) and personal attention at the appropriate location.

* In public education, local teaching and learning can be enhanced by telecommunications providing access to people and information in the next county or on the other side of the world. Telecommunications is also a key resource for extending learning environments into homes, offices, libraries, and community centers.

* Other government services from field inspections to forms processing are amenable to revision through applications of voice, data, and video telecommunications. These applications can be designed to improve quality and access, and reduce or avoid costs.

* Modern manufacturing processes increase the responsiveness of production to the immediate needs of purchasers. Raw materials and finished products are put into computer-coordinated shipments monitored by NII-enabled location tracking systems, reducing dependence on large inventories in warehouses and storerooms.

FROM SUBSTITUTION TO STIMULATION
Because of the popularity and effectiveness of telecommuting as a work practice, telecommunications is becoming embedded primarily as a transportation substitute in the thought processes of transportation researchers and government planners. But a closer examination of the U.S. experience over the last few decades does not reveal a natural evolution of telecommunications substituting for travel. Both grow together, one feeding the other. Travel per household is rising, urban congestion is increasing, and latent demand for travel emerges clearly when new road capacity is opened up, even as the NII is expanding. This report provides additional, cautionary perspectives on the idea that telecommunications is a force for reducing the need to travel. As telecommunications volumes build independently of direct substitution for transportation, an opposite effect occurs, namely, travel stimulation. A number of distinct stimulation effects can be identified:

* Telecommunications causes economic growth, productivity improvement, and income growth at the individual, organizational, and societal level. More money means more travel.

* As the economy grows, the use of telecommunications expands the number and geographic scope of economic and social relationships in which people and organizations engage.

* Telecommunications permits geographic decentralization of residential settlement, and of organizational activity locations. Decentralization leads to higher travel consumption, because trip origins and destinations tend to be farther apart.

* Telecommunications enables rapid response systems that dispatch customized vehicle trips to meet personal and organizational needs. Examples of this are just-in-time logistics, home delivery of fast food, overnight package delivery, and temporary employment services.

* New telecommunications functionality resulting from digital switching and fiber optics supports population growth and a wider span of economic activity in rural communities, leading to growth in travel.

* Telecommunications makes travel time more productive and more feasible for travelers; use of wireless mobile phones while traveling is the leading example.

* Telecommunications makes the transportation system work more effectively and efficiently. Examples of this are air traffic control, computerized airline reservation systems, and Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems (IVHS).

EFFECT OF IMPROVEMENTS IN THE NATIONAL INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURE
The deployment of interactive, more functional, higher bandwidth communications into homes and rural areas will allow more telecommuting and other travel substitution practices. But at the same time a better telecommunications infrastructure will probably reinforce the dynamics that make telecommunications a travel stimulator as well. More powerful telecommunications will feed all of the ways listed above in which telecommunications expands the motivations to travel.

Other benefits of the NII are more important to the nation than travel savings: support of health care reform, efficient government, better education for our children, and rising manufacturing competitiveness. Telecommuting, in particular, is a very useful practice for stronger reasons than travel savings. It provides a work environment where workers can be more productive and closer to their families at the same time.

Whether the widespread deployment of more powerful, higher bandwidth telecommunications will lead advanced economies to show growing telecommunications usage per unit of economic output relative to transportation intensity depends significantly on changes in the price-performance of transportation. In the United States, for example, the cost of driving automobiles, based on fuel prices, vehicle prices, and taxation, is declining. This cost trend tends to work against trip substitution even while continual improvements in the price-performance of the NII supports substitution. An analytical, econometric determination of how telecommunications and transportation have been substituting for each other or complementing each other as economic inputs during the past few decades of NII expansion is an important follow-up research need coming out of this study.
A NEW POLICY PARADIGM
A dominant public policy paradigm today is that telecommunications yields telecommuting which yields travel savings. The wide impact of telecommunications on the economy and society in contrast to the limited travel impact of telecommuting suggests that a better paradigm is now needed: Telecommunications yields some travel savings through telecommuting and other travel substitution effects, but also sets up a countervailing mechanism of travel stimulation that needs to be more widely recognized and better understood.

Governments must learn to coordinate public policy on telecommunications, transportation, land use, and capital facilities investment in light of the interactions described here. The overall challenge is to allocate resources and attention reasonably across the entire spectrum of public facility systems that provide support for the transactions and relationships comprising economic and social life. Such systems include the cables, circuits, services, and computers of the National Information Infrastructure; the roads and airports of the transportation system; and physical locations like schools, libraries, clinics, and meeting halls where people interact directly with other people.
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GOVERNMENT POLICY
A more explicit and complete inclusion of telecommunications in planning processes for improving the overall transportation system is a government responsibility deserving higher visibility at the state and metropolitan-area level and the encouragement of USDOE. Telecommuting and other telecommunications applications cut across both the supply and the demand sides of transportation, and are part of both the problem and the solution of state and metropolitan regions meeting the air quality and mobility goals mandated by the Federal Clean Air Act Amendments and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act.

Consideration of telecommunications would fit well into a least cost, integrated resource planning (IRP) framework that incorporates travel substitution, stimulation, and system management. IRP transfers ideas and methods that are now successfully used in electric energy planning to the transportation arena.

Also, government policy could focus on promoting and ensuring telecommunications-based alternatives to travel for the inevitable future periods when travel becomes difficult or expensive due to disruptions from special events, weather, disasters, or oil supply interruptions.

Although government policy intervention to accelerate the deployment of higher bandwidth and other more powerful telecommunications capabilities cannot be justified by the potential for travel savings alone, there are many other government roles in developing NII technology and applications that make productive use of tax dollars:

* Development and deployment of government processes that use the evolving NII to deliver more service for less money. Accessing government records from home and library computers is an example.

* Support of NII improvement in disadvantaged geographic areas and for socially-important applications that the market leaves behind despite the economic cost to society at large.

* Legislative and rule-making action to eliminate barriers to the deployment of NII-enabled services for health care, education, and government services generally.

In short, government leaders must take their vision for transportation changes in the information age beyond telecommuting to a much larger set of NII applications that comprehensively affect the movement and location patterns for both organizations and individuals. Basing public policy on a more complete understanding of the new information technologies and their patterns of use will reduce the costs and increase the benefits to our society and economy from the parallel infrastructures of transportation and information.

Sunday, September 23, 2007

More workers telecommuting, but obstacles remain

September 23, 2007

By Philip Walzer
The Virginian-Pilot

NORFOLK

When the Navy transferred Marlieke de Lange Eaton's husband from Rhode Island to Norfolk in 2005, she knew she'd accompany him. But Eaton wanted to take her "dream job" with her.

Since January 2003, she'd been with the U.S. Sailing Association as associate communications director, serving as chief spokeswoman, updating the group's Web site, and putting out a weekly electronic newsletter. Eaton, who began sailing as a girl in Holland, didn't want to give up the job.

She went to her boss with a proposal: Could she keep working out of her new house, more than 540 miles from the association's office in Portsmouth, R.I.,

He said yes, not without a touch of uncertainty.

Two years later, both employer and employee say the arrangement has been smooth sailing. Eaton, 33, works out of a third-floor office in her Lafayette Boulevard home. She spends more hours on the job now, checking e-mail first thing in the morning, eating lunch at her desk, occasionally returning to work on the weekends.

"Obviously, the benefit is, we get to keep Marlieke working with us," said her boss, Dan Cooney, the association's marketing director. "We don't want to lose a person like this. She means too much to the organization."

"To be very honest," Cooney added, "I would much rather have Marlieke sitting in the next office. But the next-best thing is Marlieke by the phone and by the e-mail, working with us."

More Americans are "teleworking" or "telecommuting," spending at least part of their workdays at sites other than their offices, usually their homes. The reasons, among others: a spouse's move, the desire to avoid a long commute, the birth of a child.

But Hampton Roads lags behind the rest of Virginia and the country in embracing the trend, statewide and national surveys show. Observers say that's partly because local parking costs are not high enough and traffic jams not bad enough to propel workers to demand alternatives.

Regionally, 7.2 percent of workers engage in some form of teleworking, compared with 11.3 percent across Virginia, according to a July survey by the state Department of Rail and Public Transportation. Those numbers do not include self-employed workers.

WorldatWork, a nonprofit professional association, this year estimated the national participation rate at 19.2 percent. Omitting "contract" or self-employed teleworkers, that number falls by more than half, to 8.3 percent.

"My sense of it is, it's not a commonly used work procedure here in Hampton Roads," said Donald Davis, an associate professor of psychology at Old Dominion University who studies the trend.

Still, Tim E. Jenney, a sales manager for Cox Business in Virginia Beach who helps set up teleworkers electronically, has seen business grow the past few years. "We see a little bit of everything - from mom-and-pop stores that can work out of their home now to larger companies who are allowing their employees to stay home."

The biggest obstacle, Davis said, is the boss's mindset. "Organizations don't trust their people to work away from the office. Managers feel out of control when they can't see them."

Studies, however, offer positive takes on telecommuting, showing improved morale and productivity and reduced sick leave and turnover. Companies including AT&T and Merrill Lynch reported $10,000 in savings for each telecommuting employee.

Workers save, too. Terry Smith, 52, switched to working from her Chesapeake home during her last eight years as a systems programmer for Bank of America. Between parking, gas and lunch savings, Smith estimated she recouped more than $100 per week - or more than $5,000 per year.

Environmentalists say it also reduces pollution and road congestion. A Texas A&M University study released Tuesday said the average U.S. worker spends the equivalent of nearly 40 hours each year stuck in traffic going to and from work.

The drawbacks of telecommuting include lack of social interaction and the worry that working at home will hinder job advancement.

"The people at the post office I go to are almost like my best friends," Eaton said. "I go there and I'm like, 'Hi!' "

In 2001, the state opened the Telework VA program to encourage businesses to pursue telecommuting. So far, participation has been meager.

The program, begun in Northern Virginia, offers up to $35,000 over two years to cover costs such as leasing equipment for teleworkers. By the close of those two years, companies must have at least 10 employees who telework at least six days a month. Hampton Roads and Richmond were added last year.

Jennifer Thomas Alcott, the director of Telework VA, counts 52 Virginia businesses - eight in Hampton Roads - that are current or past participants or are on the verge of entry into the program. Virginia has more than 620,000 small businesses, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration.

"It has been very small to date," Alcott said. "That's because we have no marketing."

In the fall, she said, the program will launch a public relations campaign that she thinks will boost interest.

U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, who represents the 10th District, is one of Congress' foremost advocates of telecommuting. The Northern Virginia Republican has inserted threats into the federal budget to cut agencies that don't do enough to promote teleworking. These days, though, he sees education as more important than mandates.

"It's a mind-set," Wolf said. "That's the biggest hurdle. But the hurdle is collapsing. More people are teleworking, and they see the results."

Rita Mace Walston, executive director of the Telework Consortium, a nonprofit group based in Northern Virginia, looks at it this way: "I think we're still pushing this rock uphill in a lot of respects, but I can see the crest of the hill from here. We're getting to the point where it's more and more accepted.

"But it's still not generally accepted."

Eaton works at a wide brown desk in her home office. The floor is lined with stacks of handbooks with titles such as "U.S. Olympic Committee Guide to National Sports Talk Radio Shows." The room also features an expansive view of the neighborhood; Eaton usually keeps the blinds down to keep focused.

In many respects, Eaton follows recommended practices for teleworkers. Her office, on the third floor, is set off from the rest of her house. Only a phone with her work number rings into the room.

She also returns to the Sailing Association's Rhode Island office about once every six weeks to maintain relationships.

"It's very important to have face-to-face and eye-to-eye contact," Eaton said. "There are things you can't tell about people's attitudes on the computer."

Eaton has a 3-month-old daughter, Fleur, who usually stays on the second floor while Eaton works. But she soon hopes to land a nanny or an opening at a day care center. "I can just imagine a conference call with our major sponsor, Rolex, and me saying, 'Excuse me, I've got to feed my daughter.' That's not professional."

She's right, Walston said. "Telework should not replace day care."

Kelli Raineault is a new mother, with a different telecommuting arrangement. Raineault, 27, has worked for more than three years at KPMG as a senior tax associate. After her son, Nathaniel, was born in February, she switched to working part time, from her Virginia Beach home. Unlike Eaton, who works regular hours, Raineault begins digging into her tax returns at 7:30 or 8 p.m., after her son goes to bed.

Though telecommuting attracts women who have young children or whose husbands have been transferred, studies show the majority of teleworkers are men. Upper-income earners are more likely to work from home. The racial breakdown is similar to that of the population as a whole.

Marketing and information technology professionals, who rely on the phone and computer, are natural fits for telecommuting. Attorneys can be, too.

Melissa Morris Picco joined the Norfolk law firm of Crenshaw, Ware & Martin PLC in 2005. When her husband was assigned to NATO in Brussels, Belgium, earlier this year, Crenshaw let her stay on part time. That comes to nearly a 4,000-mile telecommute.

She can't take depositions or argue motions in court. But she can still research issues online and write motions and memoranda. Working at home, she finds fewer distractions. But she also feels the loss of contact with colleagues, both personally and professionally.

"I wouldn't choose to telecommute if I didn't have to," Picco, 34, said by telephone.

Representatives of some businesses, including Cox Communications, Northrop Grumman Newport News and TowneBank, say the nature of their work provides little opportunity for teleworking.

"With the majority of our positions here, even mortgage lenders, they're in the office," said Judy Stephenson, senior vice president for TowneBank. "They need to be available to meet with people."

Teleworking advocates, however, say employers need to think broadly about the possibilities. Police officers and nurses can telework when they're doing paperwork. Personal assistants have become virtual assistants.

Other local telecommuters include a grant manager for the Judeo-Christian Outreach Center in Virginia Beach, an accounting supervisor for White's Nursery & Greenhouses in Chesapeake and the general manager for Rowena's gourmet food manufacturer in Norfolk.

Davis, the ODU professor, sees a downside to the increased productivity attributed to telework: "There's no question, it's like giving alcohol to an alcoholic. You're fueling a workaholic." Yet his research has shown increased satisfaction among telecommuters.

A more immediate worry is how telecommuting might affect a worker's future. In a global survey by Korn/Ferry International this year, 61 percent of executives said telecommuters were less likely to advance up the corporate ladder.

"Teleworkers do have to work harder to have their accomplishments noticed," said Walston, from the Telework Consortium. "They're not there to toot their own horns all the time."

Consider Abbey O'Connor. She wonders if she lost her job because she telecommuted.

PricewaterhouseCoopers allowed her to work from home when she moved from New York to Farmville in 2000. Two years later, "cuts had to be made, and a large number were telecommuters," including O'Connor.

"You don't seem as critical when you're not there," said O'Connor, now a lecturer in management at Longwood University. "Not that we weren't doing the job."

News researcher Maureen Watts contributed to this report.

Philip Walzer, (757) 222-3864, phil.walzer@pilotonline.com

Friday, October 9, 1998

Telecommuting's big idea

Over the past six years, NTQ articles have chronicled many aspects of the telecommunications technology underlying a social revolution. Even while many readers of NTQ are focused on advancing the revolution through the development and deployment of specific new technologies, some of us are pondering the larger meaning of telecommunications for societal functioning: how people produce, consume, play, interact, learn, locate, and move around. The fallout from marrying computers and telecommunications is described variously by optimists and pessimists: Information overload. More opportunity. Faster pace of life. More choices. More security. More competition. Higher productivity. More pressure. More convenience. More fun. More anxiety. Intellectual and sensory stimulation. Less privacy. More control. More privacy.1 More unknowns. Working at home. Shopping and managing financial investments from work. Friction-free capitalism.

Phil Burgess, president of the Center for the New West2 think tank based in Denver and an insightful observer of social and technological trends, writes and speaks about how big ideas and technology combine to shape society.3 He points out that big ideas are the drivers of change, and that technology facilitates the process of people understanding, accepting, and taking action on a new big idea. Burgess provides several examples of how this process has worked in history. Two inventions, the astrolabe and the caravel,4 permitted Christopher Columbus to mount an expedition to pursue his big idea that man could sail west to go east. The Gutenberg printing press let Martin Luther initiate the Reformation in pursuit of his big idea that the Church would not be required for religion if only enough bibles could be put into the hands of the "priesthood of all believers."

Burgess is a close observer of advanced telecommunications technology, which he calls telecomputing in recognition of the role of computers and software. He looks around at the revolutionary changes underway and does not yet find a coherent organizing theme. Burgess believes that the big idea to be associated and advanced through telecomputing is still in the process of being born and not yet defined. He sees this lag as natural and expected, since Columbus's big idea came 55 years after the astrolabe and caravel, and Martin Luther's came 62 years after the Gutenberg press.

This essay is a modest attempt to propose a big idea that will be facilitated by broadband, computer-enhanced telecommunications, and provide an overarching meaning of what telecommunications does for society. Over the past few years in the pages of NTQ, I have tried to eliminate several candidates for big idea honors. In earlier essays, I have criticized the familiar and well-advocated ideas that advanced telecommunications solves traffic congestion,5 that telecom is a key to sustainability,6 and the hoary old chestnut of being able in the information age to do "anything, anytime, anywhere."7

So now, in this final issue of NTQ, I present for your consideration a simple but big idea that telecom makes possible: where best to go depends on what you know.

I mean "go" in the physical sense of where we travel with our bodies. By "know," I mean what we perceive in our consciousness from all sources. Expanding this idea, I'm claiming that we can improve our lives by focusing sharply on how we select and interact with the people and places with whom we want face-to-face, physical proximity -- customers, colleagues, friends, lovers, the Grand Canyon, grandma's house, the grocery store, a museum, a place of contemplation. We can use telecom to improve how we spend our limited stock of time each day -- where we spend it, with whom we spend it, and how we interact.

While telecommunications is the growing enabler of activity at a distance, in fact, its highest value is in helping us allocate our limited time and attention to our physical location and the associated requirement of movement between various locations -- with what and whom do we need or want proximity? Telecommunications facilitates a better level and mix of proximity to the people and places we care about. But this only happens when we consciously focus our use of telecom on deciding where and with whom we should be physically close.
Proximity

The big idea proposed here stems from what I believe is an obvious but underemphasized natural law: Physical proximity is intrinsically and permanently different from telecommunications for many kinds of human interactions and relationships. Videoconferencing will never equal everyone being in the same room. Distance learning will never be the same as learning in a classroom. Electronic shopping will never be the same as going to the store. The differentiation shows up in performance gaps between the two modes of interaction. I emphasize differences between modes rather than superiority of one mode over the other. Remote interaction is better in some circumstances; face-to-face interaction is better in others.8 And once we know the difference, the former becomes a way of fine-tuning the latter.

The differences between proximity and remote interaction have many causes:

*

Face-to-face conversation or other in-person interaction in a confined, dedicated space can focus attention differently than telecommunicated interaction. A sharper focus of attention can lead to greater reinforcement of learning and retention of information in formal or informal educational sessions.
*

Taking a trip to visit someone demonstrates more concern and commitment than a telecommunicated message or interaction.
*

Visiting in person allows for sensate input -- temperature, vibration, aroma, taste, and crowd noise, for example. Also, the ability to touch a person, animal, or object occurs when a visit is made.
*

The information input can be much higher in a physical setting; that is, traveling to a meeting room located in another company allows one to learn more about the organization and its people than interacting with the video images of persons in a meeting room.
*

Mixing face-to-face and telecommunications connections in a single meeting creates important qualitative differences in the character of the communications between participants that probably put some participants at a disadvantage. The people sitting with the boss in the conference room may have a distinct advantage in being persuasive in comparison to the group that is coming into the room only via speakerphone or videoconferencing console. This distinction could sometimes motivate the distant participants to try to attend in person.
*

Some people have a comparative skill or other advantage in face-to-face communications; they are attractive, intimidating, or are particularly effective in face-to-face conversation. People can also be relatively disadvantaged in the use of telecommunications media such as videoconferencing, and find face-to-face more effective. Training lasting from one to five days makes an enormous difference in the effectiveness of an individual who communicates via a video channel.9
*

Power and status are acknowledged when one goes to the office of a powerful or otherwise high-status person. Similarly, visiting the office of a customer can be a demonstration of respect.
*

Being in a location or traveling to a place offers the opportunity for peripheral, serendipitous experience. For example, once when on the way to the kickoff planning meeting for a consulting project with the state government of Idaho, I happened to meet and chat with the Governor of Idaho on the airplane from Seattle.
*

Visiting in person offers the opportunity to exercise flexibility of purpose at the intended destination and at add-on destinations. For example, one can easily drop in on a customer while "in the neighborhood," even though getting through on the phone may normally be difficult.
*

Many feel that confidentiality of communications is more certain when messages and interactions are being handled face-to-face, and not passed through telecommunications channels vulnerable to eavesdropping and recording.
*

Many people value proximity to certain special places or people -- such as celebrities -- quite apart from the operational significance. For example, a person may value a visit to an office where his grandfather once worked quite apart from the functionality of speaking with the present occupant.
*

Sometimes the act of traveling itself has value quite apart from the purpose of the trip or the destination. Time to think, time to work, time to relax.10

As an overall point that covers several of the specific advantages listed here, research has shown that the relative effectiveness of remote electronic interaction in comparison with face-to-face proximity between people depends on what the actors are trying to do. Research over several decades in various organizational contexts has revealed the most effective tasks for electronic media.11 For example, in 1994, Fuji in Japan reported the results of research on the effectiveness of remote electronic communications as practiced in their company. These researchers developed a hierarchy of communications purpose, where remote electronic means of communications are more effective at the top of the hierarchy, and less effective at the bottom of the hierarchy (see Table 1).

[12]

Significantly, the choice between face-to-face and remote interaction is not symmetric -- because of physical limitations, the options for human face-to-face contact are inevitably fewer, more expensive, and more constrained than the options for electronic connection. This is a matter of physical reality. Moving mass is a bigger problem than moving electrons and photons.

The importance of moving people and things along a concrete highway or in an airplane is sometimes under-appreciated by information age cheerleaders, who speak glowingly of the metaphoric information highway as an obvious substitute for transportation. One catchy metaphor popularized in The Economist by Francis Cairncross13 is that telecommunications means the "death of distance." Because of the many new ways in which telecommunications makes one aware of distant opportunities for business and pleasure scattered all over the globe, I would argue that geography and distance are more alive than ever in the information age. Surely telecommunicated pictures or interactions with distant people via voice, data, and video generate more human interest in making occasional in-person visits across the miles than if the communication were absent or of lower quality.

The tension between the functionality of using telecommunications networks as a pathway for transactions and relationships versus traveling via cars and planes to face-to-face venues is pervasive in the design, development, and marketing of telecommunications applications. In each case, the advent of telecommunications-enabled options is influencing changes in the face-to-face venues as well. These changes in face-to-face relationships are, in some cases, competitive reactions to the growing power of telecommunications by stakeholders in the traditional venues.

Telecommuting
People with jobs working at home during the day grew by 40% from 1997 to 1998 in the United States.14 In the quarter century since telecommuting was invented in California, many organizations have learned the circumstances under which critical business processes can be designed for higher performance by allowing flexibility in worker location. But leading issues now include the redesign of the face-to-face office environment, and the frequency for bringing telecommuters back to the office for meetings and resynchronization with the information flowing between people in the office.

Teleconferencing
Meetings of dispersed people using teleconferencing have grown more popular as the audio and video equipment to support it have gotten better, less expensive, easier to use, and more widely deployed. Now, research is beginning to focus on when face-to-face communication is important for team performance.15

Electronic Shopping and Services
The familiar mail-order catalog with its toll-free ordering number is evolving toward online shopping via electronic catalogs on the World Wide Web. But owners and managements in place-based retail are fighting back with stores that are larger, more entertaining, multi-functional, and offer prices just as low.

Distance Learning
The art of positioning teachers in wired classrooms from which they interact with students miles away is becoming more developed and widespread. Yet, the primacy of contact-rich, face-to-face environments to meet the multifaceted developmental needs of children and young adults remains unchallenged.

Tele-health
All manner of unnecessary document and people movement is now avoided through telecommunications in the medical arena, while specialized medical services are extended through interactive telecommunications into remote areas from medical centers in major cities. But critical elements of the doctor-patient relationship remain grounded in the face-to-face, available-to-touch encounter.

Telecommunicated Entertainment
Music, drama, sports, wagering, and lewd images are spreading across ever more TV channels and Internet Websites. At the same time, concerts, plays, cinemas, spectator sports, casinos, and adult entertainment zones draw millions of place-specific audiences who want to enjoy their entertainment up close.
Shaping the Choice

Forces that shape the choice between proximity and remote interaction include the real cost of travel in dollars and time, wishful thinking of individuals, conservative organizational behavior in view of the costs of change, self-interested technology product vendors, and the undesirable qualities of some face-to-face environments.

The cost of travel always figures in the functional comparison between proximity and telecommunicating. The more difficult or expensive the journey to a remote correspondent, the more appealing telecommunications becomes as a way to "reach" that person or audience. When there is an earthquake, blizzard, or public transit strike that makes urban commuting difficult, the practice of telecommuting soars. When the barrier to transportation falls, so does the level of telecommuting. As another example, studies that measure commuting distance to work find that telecommuters tend to live farther away from the office than non-telecommuters.16

Remote solutions, whatever their cost, are typically embraced by individuals even when inappropriate, if telecommunications allows a troublesome issue to be addressed, at least potentially. For example, individuals who hate their office environment, who are really tired of commuting a long distance, or who have childcare responsibilities at home are the first to embrace telecommuting. Wishful thinking sometimes prevails when there are counterindications of appropriateness by reason of the particular job or personality that the individual has. Students who don't want to drive to class, small towns that cannot afford employing a doctor, and business travelers who don't want to travel long distances for brief meetings can also be enthusiastic promoters of remote telecommunications solutions. In all of these cases of wishful thinking, a balanced view of organizational and individual requirements is important to reaching sound decisions.

In a reverse mirror image of individual customer enthusiasm, provider organizations are sometimes conservative and block the possibilities for remote telecom solutions as a substitute for proximity. The general issue in organizations is the management attention and organizational resources for implementing a significant change in policies and processes. For this reason, consultants often recommend that remote telecommunications solutions be applied first and foremost to very significant organizational problems and opportunities, in order to clearly justify the effort required to make a big change.

In a related issue, dysfunctional office design -- too many meetings, long lines, difficult vehicle parking, unhelpful sales clerks, poor classroom teaching, and other negative characteristics of face-to-face environments -- tend to drive people to embrace remote environments more strongly. In fact, it may be cost-effective from a service provider point of view to improve the face-to-face environment instead of, or even in parallel with, the implementation of remote access. This is especially true if the face-to-face environment is necessarily going to be continued even after the remote access alternative is implemented. For example, if employees want to telecommute because there are too many meetings, management would be smart to investigate how to improve the processes for meetings, as well as the processes for telecommuting to escape from meetings.

Finally, technology vendors looking to expand sales are enthusiastic promoters of telecommuting, teleconferencing, distance learning, and tele-health. The claims of vendors tend to overstate the benefits and applicability of remote solutions generally, as well as hyping the superiority of their own contribution to the application at hand.
Societal Impacts

Two other emerging and related impacts of widespread remote interaction through computer networking that are potentially serious need to be acknowledged: Increasing interest articulation and balkanization of contacts.

Political stability requires interest articulation and interest aggregation at the same time.17 New opinions need to developed and stated. At the same time, varied opinions need to be reconciled through discussion and compromise. Mass media, political parties, labor unions, and government leaders are the source of interest aggregation, which are all growing weaker worldwide. On the other hand, individual interest articulation is naturally stimulated by the Net. Never before have individuals and organizations been so empowered to circulate their viewpoints to the world. The growing lack of balance between the forces for interest aggregation and the forces for interest articulation is a problem.

As another point, because it offers easy pathways to communication with people elsewhere, electronic networking is not a natural tool for interaction within bounded geographic communities. Internet technology lets us turn our attention from our neighbors in a new and unprecedented way, allowing us to easily find and interact with people and ideas and places that are more appealing than what we can find across the street, down the block, or in a metropolitan region.

MIT researchers Van Alstyne and Brynjolfsson show that an emerging global village is not necessarily the outcome we will see from the growth of internetworking. It is also possible that improving communications access through emerging technology will fragment society and balkanize interactions. They argue:

If IT [information technology] provides a lubricant that allows for the satisfaction of preferences against the friction of geography, then more IT can imply that people increasingly fulfill their preferences. A preference for contact that is more focused than contacts available locally leads to narrower interactions. Thus, local heterogeneity can give way to virtual homogeneity as communities coalesce across geographic boundaries.

The number of neighbors with whom one interacts is unlikely to exceed a few dozen in a typical day; even in a lifetime, few people have significant relationships with more than a few thousand others. As long as human information processing capabilities are bounded, electronic media are unlikely to dramatically change this total. When geography no longer narrows interaction, people are able to select their acquaintances by other criteria such as common interests, status, economic class, academic discipline, or ethnic group. The result can easily be a greater balkanization along dimensions which matter far more than geography.18

Encouraging Trends

The present environment displays several trends of development in support of functional human proximity that should be further encouraged:

*

Office designs are starting to reflect the need for different kinds of functional proximity depending on the tasks at hand-teamwork, informal social interaction, and meeting with customers. As telecommuting and mobile work has grown over the past decade, individually-assigned offices have been downsized or even eliminated. Facility space has been reconfigured to be used by groups as needed. This could include teaming spaces, watering holes, and customer interaction spaces. This movement toward more creative functionality was stimulated by the realization that a large proportion of individually-assigned territorial office space is empty when the assigned occupants are working at home or in the field.19
*

Commercial spaces increasingly recognize and respond to the human interest in variety and stimulation. Shopping malls are adding food courts, electronic game parlors, concert stages, and other entertainment functions to raise the attractiveness of in-store shopping in the face of greater traffic congestion and the alternative of catalog shopping that is increasingly Internet-enabled. Related to this is the expanding professional urban planning emphasis on pedestrian-oriented, mixed-use, residential/commercial neighborhood design that attempts to create an attractive, high-density street life accessible by mass transportation. In support of these trends, planners in advanced urban areas need more understanding of the connection between land use and telecommunications, especially as retail economics and consumer preferences for variety and low prices are impacted by telecom.20
*

Intelligent transportation systems-the vigorous application of telecom in support of efficient surface transportation-is a rapidly-growing field of technology application.21 More work is needed to make information streams available to drivers to mitigate inefficiencies in vehicle movement, for example, information on best routing and available parking.
*

Community networking is a recent development in support of geographic communities.22 This means people in a local geographic area are using the Internet for civic purposes. Community networks try to focus on increasing participation in local politics and community improvement: For example, building awareness of a community problem or issue; changing the political process; working to modify some physical aspect of public space such as the parks, libraries, public schools, or streets; or helping disadvantaged citizens. The most effective community network Websites supplement and add value to other community development and activist processes that are focused on the same issues in the same geography. These processes usually involve a lot of face-to-face interaction. There are now indications that major telecommunications providers are trying to coordinate their infrastructure and service development plans with the efforts in community networking.

Conclusion

Telecommunications can enable us to improve the quality of the time we spend in proximity to people and places. But if the big idea this focus represents is unappreciated and not widely embraced, the power of technology misapplied will likely send us in another direction.

Replacing face-to-face physical proximity with remote interaction is a growing success. However, there are disruptive, unintended consequences of remote interaction. Teleworking and electronic service delivery are tools so effective along some dimensions that they will inevitably be misapplied by organizations. Misapplication occurs when organizational managements undervalue the benefits of face-to-face physical proximity and let inadequately developed networking applications break down the community. In most cases, telecommuting and other forms of networking should be clearly identified as a supplementary workstyle and lifestyle, not a central organizing principle.

Face-to-face environments -- offices, school classrooms, clinics, and retail stores, for example -- have evolved over a long period of time, at a pace that supports evolutionary changes in human behavior. It is reasonable that a shift toward more widespread use of remote interactive environments -- home offices, video classrooms, home health care, and electronic shopping -- will be accepted only slowly and cautiously to allow human behavior to synchronize with the technology.

In this regard, the dichotomy between those who like the spread of one-way instant messaging tools such as fax, e-mail, voice mail, and paging, and those who think it is dehumanizing communications away from interaction is interesting and pertinent. Some people feel that they are always talking to a machine instead of a person, but others believe that asynchronous messaging enables them to maintain better connection with people. Both are right, and it is taking some time for the former impression to embrace the latter result.

While telecommunications, including wireless and the Internet, is a powerful tool that permits radical restructuring of internal organizational processes and external customer service routines, there is something to be said for a cautious, measured introduction of new applications at a pace that gives people the time to learn to make productive changes in their behavior with respect to these tools.

Furthermore, mass adoption of worldwide networking can produce negative social consequences even when many organizations individually apply it well for their own ends. The negative consequences are balkanization and an overemphasis on individual interest articulation at the expense of interest aggregation. Face-to-face community, on the other hand, has under-appreciated positive externalities. Enhancing physical proximity and community should be the ongoing central organizing focus of telecommunications applications. The vast possibilities of worldwide interaction and the World Wide Web of the Internet can be tools from cyberspace that help people know where they should go in real space.

1 Lest the availability of privacy seem unreasonable, note the argument of Peter Huber in "Screen Play," Reason (May 1993):45-46: "The network is boundlessly public but also private as the womb.... The power is in the individual's hands, and his alone."
2 http://www.newwest.org . [NOTE: Phil Burgess is now at The Annapolis Institute, http://www.annapolisinstitute.net/home.html.]
3 Philip Burgess, "Telecomputing and the New InfoCulture," Keynote speech, Southern California Executive Leadership Forum, Los Angeles, CA (October 13, 1998).
4 An astrolabe is a navigation instrument that determines the angular distance of a star above the horizon, and a caravel is a type of small sailing ship.
5 J. S. Niles, "Telecommunications Won't Eliminate Traffic Congestion,"New Telecom Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (November 1993):19-23.
6 J. S. Niles, "Information Infrastructure: No Easy Road to Sustainable Development," New Telecom Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 4 (November 1995):20-23.
7 J. S. Niles, "Antidote to the Anytime, Anywhere, Anything Syndrome," New Telecom Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 4 (November 1996):50-55.
8 J. Hollan and S. Stronetta, "Beyond Being There, Human Factors in Computing Systems," CHI '92 Conference Proceedings (1992), pp. 119-125.
9 Parker Lindner, Principal, New Media Matters, personal communication (November 3, 1998).
10 I. Salomon and P. L. Mokhtarian, "What Happens When Mobility-Inclined Market Segments Face Accessibility-Enhancing Policies?" Transportation Research, Vol. 3, No. 3 (1998):129-140.
11 J. Short, E. Williams, and B. Christie, The Social Psychology of Communications (New York: John Wiley, 1976).
12 K. Nakamura, et al. "Role of Multimedia Communication in the Teleworking and Telelearning Field," Proceedings of the Pacific Telecommunications Council Sixteenth Annual Conference (January 1994).
13 "Death of distance" is a phrase coined by Frances Cairncross in The Economist magazine and described fully in her book The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1997). The phrase is unfortunate, because I have heard many take it to mean that distance is becoming less important in some grand sense, not an interpretation with which I judge Cairncross would agree. She mostly means death of distance as a determinant in the price of telecommunications to users.
14 Tom Miller, personal communication (September 8, 1998). He has conducted an annual household survey of work-at-home throughout the 1990s.
15 M. Citera, "Distributed Teamwork: The Impact of Communication Media on Influence and Decision Quality," Journal of the American Society for Information Science, Vol. 49, No. 9 (1998):792-800.
16 P. L. Mokhtarian, "Now That Travel Can Be Virtual, Will Congestion Virtually Disappear?" Scientific American (October 1997) posted at http://www.sciam.com/1097issue/1097mokhtarian.html .
17 Philip Burgess, "Telecomputing and the New InfoCulture."
18 M. Van Alstyne and E. Brynjolfsson, "Electronic Communities: Global Village or Cyberbalkans?" Posted at http://web.mit.edu/marshall/www/Abstracts.html .
19 International Workplace Studies Program, Cornell University, http://iwsp.human.cornell.edu .
20 D. Nelson and J. Niles, "Market Dynamics and Nonwork Travel Patterns: Obstacles to Transit-Oriented Development?," Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Transportation Research Board, Washington, DC (January 12, 1999). Posted at http://www.globaltelematics.com/tod99trb.htm .
21 The U.S. Department of Transportation ITS Program, http://www.its.dot.gov .
22 The Association for Community Networking, http://bcn.boulder.co.us/afcn .

From NTQ (New Telecom Quarterly), Volume 6, Number 4, Fourth Quarter 1998 Copyright 1998, NTQ

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