Neighborhood Work Site: Solution to Traffic Problems?

Henry Ford once stated the intended use of the automobiles he was producing, best from memory: to let the city fellow take his family out on a picnic in the country on a Sunday, and the farmer come into town to shop once in a while.

Clearly, if we were using the automobile that way, we would have no need for importing oil and we would have no traffic problems. Clear also is that Ford and other automotive pioneers would be horrified at our present traffic nightmares and driving habits.

Looking at the nightmare scenes around the Washington D.C. area where I live, particularly the hellish situation at the Springfield interchange and the cars taking an hour to get turned from the beltway to I95 South, it is obvious that no amount of road-building is going to solve the problem, and that the only possible solution is going to involve a societal change, in which we begin to use electrons instead of all the oil and rubber.

I would guess that no more than 10% of the people out in all this traffic actually need to physically be at one particular place more than one day during the week. Noting also that the average person is not sufficiently organized to work from home, what I would propose is that there be worksites around neighborhoods, so that when Joe Smith who lives in Annandale Va. takes a job or a contract assignment in Gaithersburg Md., he might need to drive to Gaithersburg one day of the week but, the other four days, he reports to his own neighborhood work site, replete with office space, cubicles, secretaries, computers, and every necessary internet link to the site in Gaithersburg.

The one day Joe actually needed to be in gaithersburg, he would find that getting there took 30 minutes rather than the two hours he would anticipate it taking in present traffic, since the present traffic would be gone. At present, I will not even take contract assignments which involve crossing bridges. People call me up occasionally asking if I'd be interested in a project in Rockville or Bethesda and I tell them if I owned a helicopter, I wouldn't NEED to work for a living...

My guess is that, if we did this, our traffic problems would vanish, our energy problems would vanish, our vehicles would last much longer, and business would have a huge surplus of money in their hands, since their office-space requirements would be cut to a fraction of what they now are. In other words, a company which employed a hundred people might still need a conference room and a few other necessary rooms, but it would only need office space for the 10 - 20 employees who figured to be there on a given day, and not for all 100.

Salvaged also would be the enormous wastage in man-hours and energy involved in our present system. People would find other and more productive uses for the hour to four hours they are presently spending in traffic, along with their eight - ten hours on the job.

What was the U.S. population in 1960? Where there traffic jams then?

How many immigrants entered the country since? Count them plus the natural growth of such population or estimate the U.S. population if only the moderate immigration allowed in the 60's was permitted. Would there be traffic jams today?

How many illegal immigrants are in the country today. How much energy do they consume. Estimate how much lower our energy imports would be if we kicked out ALL the illegals.

Estimate the additional energy needs if we were to continue to allow large numbers of legal immigrants in the country and tolerate the ever-growing population of illegals. How many months/years would take the illegal immigrant population in the country to consume ALL the estimated ANWR oil? Do a study on the environmental/energy impact of illegal immigration. How many acres of rain forest in Brasil would not burn each year if the U.S. had zero illegal immigrants?

If each and every illegal immigrant were driving down the highway in an SUV I'd have an easier time picturing that being the problem. In actual fact, I mainly see illegal immigrants waiting at a few particular corners in the morning for a truck to pick them up and take them to construction sites.

A bigger problem is women, at least in any comparison with the 60's scene. In 1060, most women stayed home and raised kids, whereas now they're nearly all out driving to jobs in traffic. Most of them could be working from neighborhood work sites (along with any illegal aliens who weren't actually needed at construction sites).

Theillegal immigrants and the fresh legal ones are probably driving the older cars. The ones that tend to burn more gas and generate more pollution. And, clearly, a country of 200,000,000 people would consume about 2/3 of the energy needed to keep a country of 280,000,000 people running.

I read a claim that the average urban commute has always been 45-minutes to an hour. That at the height of Rome, bureaucrats walked that far to work.

Solutions are only pursued to completion when a problem is perceived as warranting the effort. I’m sure the traffic crunch in DC has inspired more than a few creative solutions, but it’s not ubiquitous enough to drive some kind of nationwide organizational revolution, at least not yet. If and when that does happen, It probably wont result in any kind of mass roll outs of modular neighborhood utopian work environments.

Working in healthcare IT and management consulting, I spent several years pressing organizations to make minor incremental changes that seemed dramatic to them. My guess is that the difficulty of reorganizing and managing neighborhood work environments will generally cost more than our tolerance for a 45 minute to one hour commute.

"what I would propose is that there be worksites around neighborhoods, so that when Joe Smith who lives in Annandale Va. takes a job or a contract assignment in Gaithersburg Md., he might need to drive to Gaithersburg one day of the week but, the other four days, he reports to his own neighborhood work site, replete with office space, cubicles, secretaries, computers, and every necessary internet link to the site in Gaithersburg."

What corporations would do: There would be worksites around neighborhoods throughout the world, so that when Jiang Xikui who lives in Chongqing, China takes a job or a contract assignment in Gaithersburg Md. he might need to teleconference to Gaithersburg one day of the week but, the other four days, he reports to his own neighborhood work site, replete with office space, cubicles, secretaries, computers, and every necessary Internet link to the site in Gaithersburg.

My Dad has had a number of very successful work-at-home jobs. He is happiest when his daily commute is down the hall with his coffee in one hand and the last bite of breakfast in the other. What is it about programming that requires going "in" somewhere every day? Nothing! A meeting now and then and email/phone ought to suffice.

However, invariably, the boss who is smart enough to realize that this increases productivity leaves, and the new boss, who is too anal-retentive to see straight, comes in and screws everything up by demanding my Dad come in. My Dad then finds himself being subject to all the interpersonal distractions and time wasters that go along with going to and being in an office. Since he's a hermit by nature, this makes him miserable. He hates it when people try to suck him in to office politics.

Then the resumes start flying around the country and my Dad ends up somewhere else. It's a vicious cycle, and it has resulted in my mom's art business (also mostly work-at-home) being uprooted time and time again.

A bigger problem is women, at least in any comparison with the 60's scene.

You win the prize for being the most correct. As one who has been involved in urban planning issues, the illegal alien does not impact traffic as much as they impact schools.

The biggest change in traffic congestion came from adding power steering, power brakes, and automatic transmissions to automobiles. (The application of "hydraulic/pneumatic technology that came from military aircraft.) This "power assist put the "Little Woman" in the drivers seat and on the freeway.

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