[sustran] Re: Green activist slams government's teleworking policy

[Thomas Krag]

A few comments - not to teleworking in itself, but on short trips:

Is is a general misunderstanding that short car trips are worse than long car trips. It is very true that a calculated figure of the emissions per distance will be bigger for short trips than for long trips. But the opposite is true for the actual emissions. So if a long car trip is substituted with a short one, pollution will go down.

Personally I still have to be convinced on the need for inventing a motorised system to cater for short trips (up to 3 km). I rather think a mental change is needed, and maybe some planning interventions as well.

The key issue of the mental change in question is to bring about an understanding that motorisation, even how good it can be for a long range of purposes, is not always THE solution. 

For trips up to 3 km, for example, a superior but non-motorised solution has been demonstrated in several countries and cities. Many doubt the relevance, and in some places it is difficult to implement it due to planning obstacles - therefore planning interventions may be necessary. Where conditions are acceptable, however, a 3 km trip including access-, egress- and waiting time can usually be carried out in less than 15 minutes, for the more experiences userd and well planned areas even in less than 10 minutes.

The solution is named "bicycle".

Enjoy your ride!

Thomas Krag

--

Thomas Krag Mobility Advice
Wilhelm Marstrands Gade 11
DK-2100 København Ø
Tel +45 35 42 86 24, mob 27 11 86 24
tk at thomaskrag.com - www.thomaskrag.com

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Brendan Finn 
  To: Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport 
  Sent: Friday, December 10, 2004 12:44 PM
  Subject: [sustran] Re: Green activist slams government's teleworking policy


  Teleworking is good for those whose work permits it. I agree that it has huge potential, especially in countries with a knowledge economy. 

   

  A lot of attention has been paid to technical, organisational, oversight, the arrangements within the home (or local office/desk), and self-management issues - i.e. to the work itself.

   

  Two aspects that must also be considered : 

   

  a)       The amenities where you are located - if it's dead suburbia, you don't really have access to very much during the day. After a while, that's not a lot of fun.

  b)       The local transportation system. Public transport is designed to take you to/from the city centre, along the key arteries. It is ABSOLUTELY NOT designed for the local run-about journeys of 2-3 km. These are, of course, the typically journeys of home-makers and teleworkers. 

   

  I'd be very interested to see whether the great ecological savings from the commute to downtown or out-of-town cube-farm is offset by a huge amount of local trips, and even if people have found themselves having to BUY ANOTHER CAR because the local transportation doesn't serve them. And as we all know, short trips by car are ecologically the worst.

   

  Personal example at this stage. I work from home when I'm in Ireland (about half the time, my journey to work distance should make an interesting distribution). I'm in the suburbs of Dublin, good bus service to city centre. But there's nothing for the local trips. What I can do in 5 minutes by car takes about a half-hour on foot, and probably as long when I factor in wait time - for the few trips that I could do by bus. I was spending more time on simple errands (pick up some stationary, computer accessories, call to travel agent, plus personal stuff) than I ever did in the daily commute. In August I finally gave in - me, a lifelong public transport advocate - and bought a car for the local trips. (The shame, the shame!).

   

  The answer definitely lies in local flexible transport - probably a combination of small bus-based and affordable taxi - where we can get low-fare trips in shared vehicles at a level of service that is close to taxi. Tariffs would be higher than regular bus, but probably not too much more. Problem is, the city authorities don't want to know (they have lovely highway plans), and both the bus operators and the taxi operators see it as a threat. 

   

  Anyone else got perspectives on this ?

   

  Brendan Finn, 

  ETTS, Ireland.

   

   

   

  -----Original Message-----
  From: sustran-discuss-bounces+etts=indigo.ie at list.jca.apc.org [mailto:sustran-discuss-bounces+etts=indigo.ie at list.jca.apc.org]On Behalf Of EcoPlan, Paris
  Sent: 10 December 2004 11:19
  To: XWorkCafe at yahoogroups.com; Sustran-discuss at jca.ax.apc.org
  Cc: j.goodman at forumforthefuture.org.uk
  Subject: [sustran] Green activist slams government's teleworking policy

   

  Ingrid Marson, ZDNet UK, December 09, 2004, 14:25 GMT 

  More : 

  1.      Source: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/0,39020645,39179945,00.htm

  2.      Click here to download a free copy of the report.

  http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/publications/greenteleworkpub_page2012.aspx

  3.      Click here to share your views with group : mailto:XWorkCafe at yahoogroups.com

   

  Jonathon Porritt, ex-director of Friends of the Earth, has criticised government reports on teleworking as 'tokenist'

  An environmental charity has called on the UK government to revise its policy on teleworking and encourage organisations to use it as part of their environmental policy. 

  On Wednesday Forum for the Future launched a report on teleworking which showed how it can be used to reduce the impact that companies have on the environment and promote sustainable economic development. 

  Jonathon Porritt, the programme director of the charity, said government reports on teleworking do not have enough information on how it can be used to improve sustainability. In particular, he criticised a report produced by the Department for Trade and Industry in 2003, entitled Telework Guidance, and a report by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as respectively having "tokenistic references" and "only the odd tokenistic paragraph" on how businesses should use teleworking to reduce their environmental impact. 

  "The government in every level has got to stop pussy-footing around with sustainable development and embed in its practice," said Porritt. 

  The charity's report, entitled "Encouraging Green Teleworking", found that teleworking reduces the need for transport and will therefore contribute to achieving the government's targets on cutting carbon dioxide emissions. This is a necessity for the government after its admission on Wednesday that it will fail to meet its target on cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2010 -- something Porritt didn't duck during his speech. 

  "The Prime Minister thinks it's a pretty ambitious goal to achieve its climate change goal of 20 percent," said Porritt. "Well, so do I when I look at the government policy." 

  Sun, which commissioned the charity's report and has had a teleworking policy for five years, initially started its policy on teleworking due to the problems of traffic congestion during the dot-com boom, according to Richard Barrington, the head of government affairs at Sun. 

  "Part of the reason we started doing this was because of congestion," said Barrington at the launch event. "We did it purely because people were just sat in cars on roads. We started with drop-in centres along motorways -- industrial units where we had scattered technology." 

  Employees at Sun save two hours commuting time per week through teleworking, according to the report. 

  Companies can also save money by cutting down on the amount of office space needed. Sun has reduced its office space needs by 25 percent in the last four years through teleworking, according to the report. 

  But one environmental downsides of teleworking is that it requires more hardware, which requires extra resources to produce and creates more waste. One way to minimise this impact is for companies to use thin clients. Barrington said that a significant number of Sun employees in the States are already using thin clients at home and it is in the process of rolling out thin clients to home workers across the UK. 

  Porritt said that the technology side of teleworking is something which is likely to attract the government. "There's one bit of the sustainability that the government should like -- teleworking -- because its wonderously high-tech and glossy.it's lots of whizzy machines." 

  One important aspect of implementing teleworking is change management, something which Barrington says Sun is still dealing with. 

  "We still have a significant percentage of managers who don't like this, who think 'If I can't see, I can't manage, as I don't know what you're doing,'" said Barrington. "But if you treat people like adults or grown-ups, they tend to respond in kind." 

  Porritt has had a long involvement with environmental issues in the UK -- he was the Chairman of the Green Party in the 80s, was the director of Friends of the Earth for a number of years until he left in 1996 to set up Forum for the Future. He was appointed chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, the government's independent advisory body on sustainable development, in 2000. 

  In response to Porritt's comments, the government said that it was focused on giving companies practical advice on teleworking.

  "Of course we recognise there are very important environmental benefits to teleworking. The guidance last year was intended for practical use for employers and employees," said a DTI spokesman.

   

   
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