[Hidden-tech] HT folks, Amherst and the virtual economy on Forbes.com

[A - Z International]

Hi all,

I had this honor to write about us, about Amherst and my colleague 
John Collura at the UMass Transport Center this week. But in many 
ways this is OUR story.

Enjoy.

Amy Zuckerman
Hidden-Tech Founder


http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/17/virtual-traffic-patterns-oped-cx_azu_0418virtual.html


Commentary
Virtual Traffic
Amy Zuckerman 04.18.08, 6:00 AM ET

[]


This year, as the first wave of 76 million baby boomers reaches 
official retirement age in the U.S., traffic engineers are already 
anticipating a potential shift in driving patterns that could well 
have enormous impact on fuel consumption and traffic technology needs 
for years to come.

Imagine 20 million people in the U.S., exiting the work place in 
five-year segments over the course of the next two decades. In total, 
that's half of today's work place. As many as 70% of boomers want to 
build their own small companies from a home setting.

There are indications from staffing and recruiting companies like 
global giant Robert Half that corporations are preparing to hire back 
boomers as subcontractors, but many may operate from homes or small 
office settings close to their residences. Already, major 
corporations such as IBM (nyse: 
<http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=IBM>IBM 
- <http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=IBM>news - 
<http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=IBM>people 
) and Cisco Systems (nasdaq: 
<http://finapps.forbes.com/finapps/jsp/finance/compinfo/CIAtAGlance.jsp?tkr=CSCO>CSCO 
- <http://www.forbes.com/markets/company_news.jhtml?ticker=CSCO>news 
- 
<http://www.forbes.com/peopletracker/results.jhtml?startRow=0&name=&ticker=CSCO>people 
) are hiring more home-based workers, creating "hybrid" companies 
with full-time staff augmented by subcontractors.

Today the virtual work place trend is apparent in college towns 
across the U.S. like Amherst, Mass., and lifestyle locales like 
Asheville, N.C., and Bellingham, Wash., which are quickly becoming 
quality of life destinations for boomers developing their own virtual 
companies. Rather than experiencing clog ups during rush hour, 
quality-of-life locales like Amherst are experiencing far more 
traffic congestion at meal times--particularly lunch--as the 
self-employed virtual company owner heads to commercial districts for 
business meetings and to conduct errands. In these sorts of places, 
it's a return to the 19th century where people live and work close to 
a town or village center.

John Collura, director of the UMass Transportation Center and a 
professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, has joined 
the virtual work place as a telecommuter who travels between a home 
office and the university several days a week. He also maintains what 
career expert Barbara Reinhold calls a "sidecar company" from his 
home, so he personally encompasses two types of virtual workers. Like 
many teleworkers, he has some choice in what times he commutes, 
whenever possible avoiding peak traffic hours on highways or arterial 
roads. Collura notes that virtual company owners have even more 
choice as they can tackle work in a flexible fashion and have the 
most choice about when to drive.

He's witnessing changes in driving habits, which are contributing to 
traffic congestion in the western Massachusetts region, particularly 
at midday along arterial roads and downtown commercial districts. "If 
I was a transportation planner, I'd make sure that officials in my 
agency recognized that people are changing how they travel. Fixed 
routes and fixed schedule like bus services won't meet their needs 
like they did 50 years ago, because what's inherent in the virtual 
world is there are no predictable schedules," he says.

So, how will the rise of the virtual work place, where workers 
operate in small-office settings with PCs and communication 
technology as key back up tools, affect traffic patterns? And why, 
with the enormous attention the boomer retirement wave is engendering 
in the media and among policy makers, is there so little attention 
being paid to the impact this trend will have on traffic and possibly 
fuel consumption?

What makes the silence on this subject all the more astonishing is 
that the boomers are hardly the only ones operating virtual work 
places. This happening trend includes everyone from the "millenials" 
to members of the "silent generation" now in their 70s and 80s.

Well, it's hard to focus on a subject without concrete data, and 
national data on the virtual economy is incomplete, at best. Take a 
walk through the U.S. Census Bureau's work and transport categories 
and you'll be carried back in time--say, circa 1975, when many 
workers commuted to a day job from a suburban split-level, or at 
least worked 9-to-5 in an office building. Even though countless 
thousands of Americans make their income from their bedroom or cellar 
as virtual-company entrepreneurs, the Census Bureau is neither 
monitoring nor digging deeper into the societal implications of this trend.

That's not that surprising as the mainline media isn't all that clued 
into niches like traffic engineering. Unless it's a story that has 
sizzle--say congestion pricing in New York City or gridlock in 
L.A.--developments in traffic engineering rarely make headlines.

Fuel consumption makes headlines, but no one appears to be connecting 
the dots to the virtual economy. For example, USA Today recently 
reported that a slowing economy and rising fuel prices meant February 
fuel consumption in the U.S. was down 1%. But without viable 
statistics on virtual work places and the habits of virtual company 
entrepreneurs, we can only guess that less commuting should lead to 
less driving and less fuel usage.

Take my own personal experience: At $3.11 a gallon it costs me about 
$30 to fill my compact Geo Prism. A full tank can last me almost two 
weeks if I'm just doing around-town driving. My partner, Lew, drives 
an equal compact VW Golf and pays about $38 a week at these prices to 
commute to his job about 20 miles away. So, if we can extrapolate 
from such a limited sample we can infer that commuters could be 
paying roughly a third to a half more for fuel than stay-at-home 
workers who are limiting their driving to errands close to their home office.

Isn't it time someone got the real numbers so we can do more than 
guess? Experts like Collura say that not only are traffic engineers 
and government officials not planning far enough out for the trends 
of today that will be tomorrow's world, but this lack of foresight 
may lead to clogged town and suburban roads, empty highways and lack 
of knowledge of America's true fuel consumption needs.

It all adds up to the potential for billions of dollars in misspent 
taxpayer dollars.

Amy Zuckerman is an associate editor of Thinking Highways North 
America and principal of A-Z International Associates, an 
international marketing research firm based in Amherst, Mass.
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