Off Road Warriors

With the county spending big money to and , one group of residents is asking why the focus isn’t instead on getting more people off the roads and working from home.

Proponents say the potential benefits of increased telecommuting include not only include easing traffic congestion and saving money on commuter parking additions, but also the potential boost to the local economy through sales and increased property value as well as the environmental benefit from the reduction of vehicle emissions. 

County activists Al Alborn and have formed a group they call the Prince William County Telework Council to advocate telecommuting. Alborn and Moser say they are asking three things of the county government:

• To form a task force to explore ways telecommuting could be promoted in the county, possibly through funding new broadband or fiber optic cables for high speed internet, building Secure Compartmented Information Facitilies and broadband telework centers, or by giving tax breaks to companies that allow their employees to telecommute;
• To launch a pilot program to test the feasibility and demonstrate the efficiency of telecommuting;
• To promote telecommuting and raise awareness in the community of the possibilities for telecommuting.

Moser and Alborn hope that support from county government could drastically reduce traffic congestion and related environmental impacts by encouraging more people to work from home, even part time. “Imagine taking 5 percent of the population off the streets two or three days a week,” Alborn said.

The benefits of increased telework, the two contend, go beyond the increased quality of life for those who no longer have to fight traffic on Interstate 95 every day. With more people spending the majority of their time in Prince William County, local businesses would see a boost, they say.

“If we took 5, 10, 20 percent of people off the road in the next 5-10 years, if they started eating in Prince William County, doing their dry cleaning in Prince William County, Christmas, birthday and holiday shopping here, think what that would do for existing small businesses,” Alborn said.

And not only would businesses see a potential benefit, but homeowners could see property values increase.  Alborn and Moser say that currently, counties offering a shorter commute command higher real estate prices, but with telecommuting as an equalizer, Prince William County would have an advantage over more crowded communities inside the beltway.

Moser and Alborn believe that county money being spent on expanding roads and commuter parking would be better spent on encouraging telecommuting. Alborn, who refers to himself as a free-market capitalist libertarian, acknowledges that government cannot force businesses to allow their employees to work from home or force workers to take advantage of telework opportunities. But he argues that implementing a telework-focused policy would eventually reduce the cost and size of government. 

“Right now, our county is focused on building things,” Alborn said. “They’re doing that because that’s where campaign contributions come from. Developers run the county.”

Instead, he wants the county to spend money on initiatives to jump-start telework: “[County officials] ought to be focused on infrastructure and policy to attract government and private industry to support telecommuting and make sure we have the broadband infrastructure, telework centers, and remote SCIFs, all of which are business opportunities, to support telework infrastructure.”

The Telework Council points out that since President Obama signed the Telework Improvement Act in December, all federal agencies are required to implement a plan to allow workers to telecommute. Alborn said federal employees living in Prince William County should ask their supervisors about taking advantage of the opportunity. The federal government has set up telework.gov to provide information about teleworking, particularly to employees of government agencies.

Moser and Alborn said that Virginia Sen. George Barker and Delegates Scott Lingamfelter and Rich Anderson all support increased telework.

Alborn said that what is needed is a paradigm shift. “The emphasis has been moving the workers to the knowledge, using roads and parking and buses and trains,” Alborn said. “Instead of moving workers to the knowledge, we want to move the knowledge to the workers.”