EARTHQUAKE / The Long Road Back : This Was a Telecommuting Wake-Up Call, Folks

The freeways are down. The traffic is terrible. The debate should be over. If we really want to improve the post-earthquake commutes, let’s not fix those fallen freeways quite so fast.

It’s no longer enough to merely “encourage” telecommuting. Southern California needs explicit policies and programs that promote mandatory telecommuting, and it needs them now.

People and companies that really care about the community understand that the post-earthquake environment is a golden opportunity masquerading as a difficult problem. There is no better time than now to focus creativity and commitment on fundamentally transforming California’s traffic.

The automotive aftershocks of the Northridge earthquake effectively demolish the tired arguments that have blocked widespread adoption of telecommuting. When you’ve got a lemon, make lemonade. Telecommuting is no longer an option, it is a necessity.

And the task of making it happen falls to government, the private sector and the phone companies alike--by using tax codes and other pressures to force change and by making mandatory the various half-steps that have been adopted voluntarily and piecemeal by some. The goal of rebuilding Southern California’s transportation infrastructure should not be the glorious re-creation of yesteryear’s traffic jams.

Indeed, the federal government should make its billions of dollars in rebuilding funds contingent upon California devising telecommuting programs that are every bit as rigorous and concrete as the freeway reconstructions. If the leaders of the city, region and state don’t have the courage to require this on their own, the nation’s taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize a Southern California that refuses to learn from experience.

The fact that California earthquake contingency plans didn’t consider telecommuting options in the event of freeway collapses represents a planning failure that is irresponsible at best and governmental malpractice at worst. So just what were the administrations of Govs. George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson and Mayor Bradley thinking? That everything would be “business as usual” after a major quake as long as millions of lemming-like commuters would get up at 4:30 in the morning so they could all get to work by 9?

The critical point, however, isn’t analyzing how all these lapses occurred--it’s making sure the region moves swiftly toward improving the quality of work life for its commuters while preserving the economic productivity of its companies. What are the obvious first steps?

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Government needs to identify the 15 or 20 companies that generate the most traffic. Those filled with “knowledge workers” and paper pushers should be required to designate a significant portion of their workers “part-time telecommuters” who work at home one or two days a week. Flextime should be mandated to smooth the rush hour crush.

In the best of times, as telecommuting experts and traffic engineers acknowledge, even marginal reductions in the number of vehicles can have a significant impact on traffic flow. Compulsory telecommuting must be the law of the land for companies whose commuters are freeway hogs.

Pacific Telesis has long been a champion of telecommuting--up to and including full-page post-earthquake ads. Unfortunately, the company has primarily been a champion of its brand of telecommuting: telecommuting centers in which work is done from satellite offices. It has otherwise been very uncreative in both its marketing and technical approaches. Now is the time to link private initiatives with public policy mandates.

While Pacific Bell Foundation’s recent offer to donate a million dollars worth of modems is a sweet gesture, it’s not meaningful. The phone company should be compelled by the Public Utilities Commission to cut by 50% to 75% the cost of local daytime phone service in the earthquake-affected local telephone exchanges. The company should be compelled to reprogram local switches so that large companies can easily and cheaply link their telecommuters together via phone mail and call-forwarding services.

By contrast, a special surtax should be slapped on mobile cellular phone calls to discourage driving. Calls that remain within a single cell would merit discounts.

The phone company should also be allowed to provide voice-over-data modems so that telecommuters can fax, compute and chat over a single phone line. The temporary loss in revenue can be made up by special statewide tariffs in about a year. Better yet, fund it with a 2-cents-a-gallon gasoline tax. PacBell’s network revenues will inevitably rise anyway as telecommuting takes hold in corporate cultures.

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No doubt there are dozens of far more creative suggestions and ideas for getting companies and individuals to substitute telecommunications highways that work for freeway overpasses that don’t.

There is nothing that prevents California’s telecommuting initiatives in the earthquake’s aftermath from becoming a model for the entire country.

For reasons both environmental and economic, distributed work and location-independent enterprise represent the future of American industry.

If California has the courage not to repeat its mistakes, it has the opportunity to turn billions of dollars’ worth of destruction into an opportunity for a higher quality of work, home life and transportation.