We've published our first research paper, The Public Cost of Increased Commuting in Northern Virginia - An Economic Analysis of Highways, Metrorail, and Congestion Tolls by Professor Anthony Yezer of George Washington University's Center for Economic Research.

The study looks at three common ways of increasing our commuting capacity as a means to answer the basic question, what does it cost the public to get one more commuter to work? (think: tax money) The conservative answer is $2,800 per commuter, per year.

Now what if you were able to get to work electronically instead of physically? What if it took only as long to "get there" as the time it takes to boot up your laptop? But wait, you say, lots of folks do that now. That's just telecommuting. Yes, but... what if you could interact with your manager and coworkers as if you were right there, seeing the nuances of their expression as they explained things, reviewing documents together as if they were lying on the conference table between you?  That's virtual presence, and most teleworkers today don't have the bandwidth to consider doing this yet. If you had this ability, would you be able to telework more often? Would people who don't telework now be able to start? The Telework Consortium believes the answer is a resounding yes, and is conducting a growing number of pilot projects to test this hypothesis. 

What does it cost to get this bandwidth? UTOPIA, a Utah project which aims to provide an all fiber network delivering 100Mbps/1000Mbps to the home, estimates the capital costs to provide fiber to the curb are $1,408 per home, andto get it from the curb to the point of use in the home at $1,468 per home, for a total of $2,876. Details are on page 10in its Feasibility presentation.

Now we have an answer to a parallel question, what will it cost to enable one teleworker to "get to work" via virtual presence? UTOPIA's estimate is $2,876 per commuter.

Note that this is a one-time capital cost, not a per-year annualized cost.

If, in addition to road improvements and mass transit options, we spent a portion of our public funds to building the broadband infrastructure to enable virtual presence, what other benefits would we reap? Lower pollution, relieved congestion, and reduced stress on employees, to name a few commonly cited ones. See John Starke's October 15, 2003 feature on Telework and Economic Development for another.

7:54:06 AM    
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