Alborn: Telework Better Than Widening Rural Purcell Rd.

Memo to the Prince William County Planning Commission,

This evening, you will be discussing the fate of Purcell Road and the Purcell Road Widening Project. While I live in “the neighborhood”, and naturally don’t want to see this local treasure covered with asphalt, I would like to bring a larger issue to your attention.

In 2010, President Obama signed the Telework Enhancement act mandating that all Government Agencies implement and support a strategy allowing Government employees to work at home (thus taking them out of the Transportation system).

As we speak, Congressman Gerry Connolly is working on Telework 2.0, an expansion of Telework legislation broadening its application to Federal Contractors.

The Commonwealth of Virginia has several incentives to encourage businesses to implement telework as well as guidelines for State Agencies.

Virginia Delegates Rich Anderson, Barbara Comstock and David Ramadan hosted the first Northern Virginia Telework Summit to kick of legislative initiatives in this are during the upcoming legislative session.

Commonwealth Transportation Secretary Connaughton identified telework as Strategic in his Report to the Governor and the General Assembly of Virginia (Report DocumentNumber 192, 2011).

The Virginia Department of Transportation is considering Telework and alternative work schedules in its Virginia Transportation Modeling Program.

Prince William County’s latest Strategic Plan lists Telework and alternate work schedules as a strategy for dealing with future transportation requirements I am on the current Strategic Planning Team.

The Prince William Chamber of Commerce has established a Telework Task Force to address how we might help local businesses take their employees off the road. I am the Chairman of this Task Force.

Simply put, technology, diminishing budgets for road construction and maintenance, clogged roads, and frustrated commuters are changing the dynamics around transportation planning. We continue to plan for roads framed in yesterday’s assumption of an ever increasing demand to move cars around instead of recognizing larger forces that may actually reduce traditional transportation requirements in the future.

Perhaps you should “take a breath”, evaluate telework as a technology megatrend, and perhaps consider incorporating taking people off the road in the transportation planning process. Such an action could change everything regarding Northern Virginia’s transportation requirements in the future, and perhaps prevent unnecessarily destroying the rural charm that attracted so many of our residents to Prince William County.

Building more roads follows the old paradigm of moving people to the information they need to do their job. The new paradigm is about moving the information to the people wherever they may be to do their jobs.

This evening, you are going to discuss destroying one of the few remaining “country roads” that help maintain Prince William County’s rural charm and unique character.

While this particular discussion is about Purcell Road, I request that you consider framing this and future discussions over the fate of Prince William County’s few remaining rural byways in the context of what the future will probably look like: successful implementation of Federal mandates, state incentives, and employee desires as more people work from home, telework centers or wherever they please in the future.

I strongly suggest that you defer any discussion of covering what little green space is left in Prince William County, Virginia with asphalt until you request staff adequately evaluate the impact technology, current and future legislation, and the nature of the future workforce on our transportation requirements.

It would be ironic if in twenty or thirty years, your legacy will be to have approved and encouraged paving over Prince William County’s rural charm with asphalt that simply wasn’t needed because of a failure to consider trends in how people will work in the future.

Missing the telework mega trend could be an expensive mistake.