Sustaining Us

What a waste! On the first day of economics class students learn about opportunity cost, the cost of an opportunity foregone. On its face, commuting seems to make financial sense, but what are the true costs? The census bureau recently termed 3.5 million people that commute more than an hour and a half a day, “Extreme Commuters.” Are they really that extreme? Another 10 million “normal” commuters travel at least an hour. Normal?!

Commuting impacts the way we consume. At the top of the list is time. While the average commute is just 24.3 minutes, in concentrated urban areas the numbers escalate. As the old saying goes, time is money and human capital a precious commodity. Adding just one hour to your productive day could go a long way. A very costly second is infrastructure. To move millions of people from point A to point B cost billions in roads, rail, and support services no matter how far the distance, let alone 60 or even 100 miles. Not to mention the millions of tons of CO2 that could be kept out of the atmosphere by finding a job closer to home. Americans in transit are just plain wasteful.

I wouldn’t be fair if I didn’t suggest a solution, alternative, or my favorite, a compromise. The best cure for a long commute is to find a similar job closer to home. Out of the 13 million commuting more than an hour, at least a handful should be able to find something closer to home. For many, the time saved in commuting will be make up for lost compensation working closer to home. For those who absolutely, positively cannot avoid their commute, Cisco has a product named TelePresence. The innovative technology is slowly being incorporated into operations by corporations, universities, and other organizations. TelePresence connects geographically separate spaces with the use of audio, visual, and multimedia inputs, i.e. HD video, high quality microphones and speakers, and computers. As of now, this technology is still cost prohibitive for the average consumer. Used as a substitute for cross country and international business meetings, a consumer application can’t be far behind. Steve Jobs, I’m sure, can’t resist, this is of course, the YouTube era.

Working closer to home saves time, resources, and frustration. Having deeper roots in your own community is worth some thought.

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