Telecommuting isn’t a free solution for Honolulu’s traffic woes

The Hon­olulu Star-Bulletin reported yes­ter­day that more Hon­olulu dri­vers are rid­ing alone to work. Today’s Hon­olulu Adver­tiser explained how rid­er­ship lev­els on The Bus have rebounded after the 2003 bus dri­vers strike. The Star-Bulletin printed a chart with some inter­est­ing fig­ures: on Oahu, the num­ber of peo­ple dri­ving along went from 61.4% to 67% between 2000 and 2005, while car­pool­ing dropped 4 points. The Advertiser’s graph showed bus rev­enue from almost US$20M in 1993 to US$41.5M in 2006.

“Telecom­mut­ing one day a week, work­ing at home, cuts down demand on roads sig­nif­i­cantly… It doesn’t cost any­thing and imme­di­ately saves money.”

Panos Preve­douros, an engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Hawaii-Manoa, pro­vided a puz­zling quote that closed the Star-Bulletin’s arti­cle. Here’s my brief list of rea­sons why telecom­mut­ing isn’t free.

1. The employee may have to pro­vide her own com­puter if the com­pany hasn’t done so.
2. The com­pany should pro­vide secure remote access for employ­ees. A VPN to the office net­work is essential.
3. The employee’s com­puter should be clean and free of viruses, mal­ware, spy­ware, key­stroke log­gers and zom­bies. Think of the telecommuter’s com­puter as an exten­sion of the company’s net­work. How does the company’s IT depart­ment pro­file off-site computers?
4. The telecom­mut­ing employee has to pro­vide her own util­i­ties and ameni­ties, includ­ing fur­ni­ture, elec­tric­ity, Inter­net access, and air conditioning.
5. There’s the psy­cho­log­i­cal costs of remote work. Some employ­ees may pre­fer to work in an office envi­ron­ment. Work­ing from home is one pow­er­ful way for an employer to exert more con­trol over an employee.
6. Work­ing off­site can be dis­tract­ing. it’s tempt­ing to turn on the TV or chat on the phone while work­ing from home.
7. Sched­ules may become too flex­i­ble. Add “just one” errand or “only a few” chores into an off­site work­day, and the telecom­mut­ing employee becomes less pro­duc­tive and attentive.

I’m assum­ing that Dr. Preve­douros is think­ing of com­muters who work in an office envi­ron­ment pro­vided by their employer. Some of the items on this list would be dif­fer­ent for com­muter who owns their own busi­ness, and this arti­cle does a nice job of cov­er­ing var­i­ous tools that a busi­ness owner might use.

Tagged as: commute, drivers, government, Hawaii, Honolulu, manoa, mass-transit, mobile, Oahu, research, telecom, traffic, university, USA