Getting People Off Roads, Knowledge to Workers Should Be 21st Century Transportation Strategy

Al Alborn: Connecting  the Dots

I like roads. When I drive Va. 234 from Interstate 95 to 66, or the Prince William Parkway from Woodbridge to Manassas, I am grateful Prince William County’s proactive approach to transportation infrastructure. I’m looking forward to the Tri-County Parkway.

If I understand the math correctly, we just can’t get ahead of our transportation problem regardless of how many new roads we build. Unless we start thinking differently.

We continue to be locked into the old paradigm of moving people to their jobs. If you build things or service things, you do have to get to your job one way or another. The simple fact is that in the Washington, D.C. area, most people work with knowledge. They take information and do something to it adding value.

These people are knowledge workers.

Knowledge workers don’t have to drive somewhere to do their jobs. They only need access to the information with which they work. With today’s technology, knowledge workers may work anywhere.

Telework is the 21st Century paradigm for connecting knowledge workers with the knowledge they need to do their jobs.

The old paradigm is to continue to build roads, trains, buses, carpool parking lots, or other tools to move people to some physical location to work with knowledge. The new paradigm is to move the knowledge to the people who need it to do their job.

In today’s economy, perhaps a strategy that reduces the resources devoted to building and maintaining roads by simply taking people off them might be a good thing. This would help us win another battle, lower taxes.

The word “transportation” is defined as moving people around. I suggest it’s time to redefine that word to include moving information around.

Transportation authorities all need to incorporate telework strategies for incorporating today’s technology and public policy into transportation planning to take people off the roads. Broadband, wi-fi, cyber security, and telework friendly public policy are the tools that will help us get ahead of the problem of moving people around every morning and evening.

Using the right tools, we can focus on moving fewer people around.

The simple fact that telework is good public policy because it reduces the cost of Virginia’s transportation infrastructure and allows us to finally get ahead of the demand to get people to the knowledge they need to do their job. It improves public safety, reduces road building and maintenance costs, creates jobs, is good for our residents quality of life, keeps discretionary dollars in their communities instead of sending them “north.”

A few politicians “get it”. Congressmen Gerry Connolly and Frank Wolf successfully passed the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 mandating Federal Employees be allowed to telework. Congressman Connolly is now working on Telework 2.0 to extend this mandate to Federal Contractors. Virginia Delegate Rich Anderson is working with other Delegates to use telework to create jobs, reduce traffic, and improve the quality of life of Virginia residents. Delegates Anderson, Comstock, and Ramadan just hosted the first Northern Virginia Telework Summit to increase public awareness of its potential. Ramadan just successfully passed a telework tax credit in the Commonwealth’s House of Delegates. Governor McDonnell recognizes it’s a good idea.

I still do not see our transportation planners at all levels “connecting the dots” between telework and transportation planning. I haven’t found the Government entity who has re-defined their mission to include the tools and infrastructure to take people off the roads.

People are locked into mental models of the way things were. We need a few leaders who may ponder the way things could be: knowledge workers who stay here instead of commuting to Washington D.C. to do a job that they could just as easily do on their back deck, or Starbucks.

It’s not lost on me that one of the reasons government emphasizes roads at all levels is because that’s what our business infrastructure knows how to do. If all you are really good at is building more roads, you focus on building more roads. You also look for politicians who are interested in building more roads.

If there is a huge opportunity here for existing businesses to redefine themselves for “what’s next”, for existing businesses to expand and add jobs to meet the demand of a large percentage of the local population working within their community, and for new businesses to provide a range wide of services to support a telework community.

Telework is a business development opportunity. Prince William County’s Economic Development Team needs to integrate telework and the businesses it both attracts and creates into its strategy.

To do otherwise it to “miss” perhaps the 21st Century’s greatest tipping point in how people perform work and the business opportunities that come after the nature of work changes.