We Canadians

Green commuting is spreading like wildfire throughout the US, as cities and counties compete with each other to provide better incentives to  workers for choosing environmentally-friendly options for getting to work. The simplest and most innovative plan belongs to Marin County in California which offers four dollars a day to County employees for using any means of transportation other than a single occupant vehicle. As Jeri Stewart, the program manager, explains “Other cities and counties have developed complex incentive programs that require an administrative  team for managing the process. We kept it very simple and passed on the savings to the commuters.” The program has successfully reduced traffic congestion and air pollution in the Golden Gate bridge area.

The U.S. government has adopted telework in a big way; the General Services Administration, employing thousands of people, wants 50% of eligible employees to telework within the next three years. It has also set up over a dozen ”telework” stations in the Washington, DC suburbs so that employees don,t have to commute to the downtown area.

The City of Minneapolis offers parking at just twenty dollars a month to car-poolers, in the downtown core. Others pay over ten times as much. The twin city of St Paul’s has launched a similar program in a bid to get commuters off the busy downtown areas.

Birmingham, Alabama, has already introduced a four-day work week for City employees. Each employee works a ten-hour day and by rotating the off days between employees, the City ensures that all services are maintained throughout the week. The State of Utah has also adopted a four-day work week for government employees, in an effort to reduce fuel costs.

With the rapid growth of the Internet, it is no longer technically necessary for many employees to be in the office most of the time. All they need is a computer, a telephone and an Internet connection and they can be at work from just about anywhere in the world. The real problem is psychological - human beings are not yet ready to work in isolation. We need the face time, the coffee breaks and the office politics to keep us going. But there is really no reason why most of us cannot take to green commuting at least one day in a week.