Why Tech + Policy That Make Us Commute Longer = Dumb

For about 3 years I commuted to work up to 2 hours each way, on the bus and/or train. I would get up when it was dark, often getting to the commuter train depot or bus stop to wait with a huddled crowd of worker bees for the next ride to arrive. We would slouch onto the train or bus, half asleep, existing in some introverted, hibernated state between bed and office, that would allow us to navigate connections and perhaps take in some information via podcast. But more often than not, my neck pillow was my best friend, and I got pretty good at sleeping against glass windows, and waking up at the appropriate stop by the alert of some mysterious internal clock. I have 4 kids, so this period of my life was particularly difficult on them. They were young, and bedtime was early, so I really only saw them for about an hour a day, if I did get to see them. I wasn't really able to build community with my neighbors, and often felt like I was living halfway between 2 places rather than in one or the other. A friend suggested that I get a crash pad in DC and just see my family on the weekends. That night, when I got home late, my wife and I agreed to move the family closer to work and increase the amount of time we had together as a family, even if it meant sacrificing space. We even considered living on a sailboat on DC's waterfront, which at the time, allowed liveaboards. While we didn't end up buying a boat, we did settle for a condo with a lot less space than we would have had further out.

But rewinding the tape, why did I choose to live so far away from work to begin with? Well, there was a great government subsidy that made public transportation completely free. The amount of the subsidy would have covered commuting distances over 2 hours away by public transportation. I knew a lot of other people who were making it work, and sure enough, the train depot was packed at 5am, so I knew I wasn't alone. As we would pull into Union Station, men in suits and running shoes would push their way off the train, as if to the starting line of a marathon, and literally sprint to the next connection. It was an odd existence. I took in a thousand hours of podcasts during that period and learned a lot.

During this period, I remember meeting a guy who commuted from Richmond every day. He would get up at an ungodly hour to drive to a pickup spot, to meet a ride share, and then sleep the rest of the way. They would beat the traffic and get into DC early, and then he would leave early to begin the long journey home. I saw in him the extreme of the cultural and economic force that I was experiencing.

The experience led me to a place where I have become critical of the forces that tempt us to commute long distances. We all know that long commutes are tied statistically to a number of health and psychological risks. As autonomous vehicles are accepted onto our roads, making it easier and easier to commute from far away, I predict the following will happen:

• there will be pressure to subsidize autonomous vehicle travel (especially if the vehicle is leased from a centralized ride provider rather than privately owned)
• there will be a spike in demand for visual entertainment content where audio only was dominant - this could increase markets for streaming video companies and decrease markets for podcasts
• as some groups push to the extreme of this capability, we will see individuals commuting to work from many hours away and conducting some work in transit, billing that time accordingly
• the greatest extreme of this trend would essentially be a life lived inside the autonomous vehicle with minimal time in a home

The societal repercussions of these trends could be very negative. I think it would be much healthier economically and socially to:

• foster innovation around asynchronous and remote work rather than innovation that tempts us to commute further
• foster dialogue around the positive impacts of decentralized work (it creates jobs in lower cost of living areas, allows families to be supported, demands cultures of trust in companies)

Coda - there is no doubt that sometimes things work better when you can have everyone together in one place. However, if we leverage remote workers, and stop offering crutches to long distance commuters, we will become more resilient and antifragile as organizations. We need to hire more people who will work from home, or work from remote sites. We need to fully leverage all of the tools that allow us to build trust and monitor progress over distance.