Telecommuting woes

"The bottom line is this - to have everyone working in a metro area punch out at 5:00 pm and then hop into their cars is insanity."

It seems like every week now, there is some letter to the editor carping about the traffic in the Twin Cities. How it seems to get worse every year. Of course, the Loony Left blames the Republicans for not passing a gas tax or license tab increase. The Right on the other hand, believes the issue is the Met Council. How they REFUSE to build more highways in the metro area. How they spend copious amounts of money on trains to nowhere instead of roads.

The irony is simply this - there are another choices. I have addressed this many, many times before. And these choices are simple and free to implement. Flexing work for as many people as possible.

Here are some ways to do it:

• Four ten hour days instead of five eight hour days. Every employee would be assigned a day off, so it would not be everyone working the same hours and commuting at the same time.
• If the five day work week is maintained, flex the work day where employees could come in as early as six or work as late as six.
• The granddaddy of them all would be telecommuting. For some jobs, working from home is absolutely an option. For other jobs it is not. And some jobs would work just fine with a combination of working within an office surrounding and other days working from home. I have done that in my career, and it worked out just fine.

The bottom line is this - to have everyone working in a metro area punch out at 5:00 pm and then hop into their cars is insanity. And year after year, we keep doing it to ourselves. With an additional 750,000 people expected in the metro area in the next 20 years, we are screwed. That is, unless we do thinks which are smart. And building expensive trains is NOT one of those things.

My opinion - we need more roads and more lanes on existing roads. We have enough money in our budget to do it. We also need to encourage more employers to practice flex hours, flex days, and telecommuting. Failure to act now will only cause our children and grandchildren to resent us even more when they are stuck in traffic.