Telecommuting Breaks Transportation, Pt. 5: Tragedy Of The Commons

This multi-part series addresses core concepts in telecommuting’s impact on transportation; concepts which have gone largely dismissed by the very experts who fund, plan, and build our nation. For more, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

Tragedy Of The Commons

A Tragedy Of The Commons occurs when the resources of a system deplete or degrade due to the selfish behaviors of individuals within that system. Crucially, the problem arises as a result of such behavior being contagious, whether directly incentivized or otherwise made deceivingly attractive to each individual at the group’s expense.

In a classic example, farmers competing to raise more cattle end up with overgrazed land, thus killing off the cattle. But there’s no need for delicate analogies here, as modern transportation is riddled with real-world tragedies.

Parking, for instance, is a textbook case. People will naturally pursue the parking most convenient to their destination, but the more we build out convenient parking, the less space we have for the actual destinations. Lacking any accountability to systemic impact, the result resembles Detroit, where 39% of the built environment is dedicated to parking. Plenty of room for cows, but not much grass to feed on.

Traffic, as well, could be the poster child for the Tragedy Of The Commons. Congestion is an obvious illustration, wherein every driver choosing to occupy an already-packed roadway believes that everyone else is the traffic… but a more poetic example lies in gridlock. As individuals selfishly squeeze through an intersection to gain an advantage, they end up forming a barrier which blocks perpendicular traffic from getting through. When streets are laid out as a grid, the clogging of that perpendicular traffic locks up everything around it, including the very traffic the guilty drivers are aggressively trying to escape.

The underlying theme of mobility-related Tragedies Of The Commons is the absence of coordination — which is why any revolution in transportation requires the full attention of local leaders and planners if it is to enhance our resources rather than drain them. And yet, it took a worldwide pandemic for the word “telecommuting” to earn a mere utterance in transportation circles.

Whatever mobility reform agenda one might champion, mass telecommuting likely dwarfs it. Sure, many of transportation’s freshest ideas claim to drastically impact economy, environment and equity as systemic telecommuting does — but the rest of them require massive lifts in coordination and planning, whereas mass telework can happen almost overnight without an ounce of oversight. And in fact, that is precisely what happened.

Let the temporary shift to telework serve as a warning. Right now, cities are experiencing parking revenue shortfalls of over 90%. Transit services reliant on commuter patterns lie in limbo. Regions are postponing infrastructure projects due to a dearth of gas tax income. While the current state of the workplace certainly doesn’t make a foregone conclusion for the future state, the vital takeaway is that it can, any time it decides to. It doesn’t need to apply for a permit from the city. It doesn’t need to raise money from venture capitalists. It doesn’t need congressional approval. It’s simply a decision.

That decision currently rests, at best, with local employers who have virtually no incentive to care about the holistic impacts of their business decisions — but at least they’re somewhat organized. At worst, the decision rests in the hands of individual employees. The same individuals who cause traffic jams and parking sprawl in naive pursuit of individual benefit at the expense of the group. Individuals don’t coordinate at scale — they elect and pay leaders to do it for them.

Alas, cities and agencies are still failing to plan for the remote work revolution. Telecommuting isn’t just an individual decision: telecommuting is transportation, and in fact, it breaks transportation as we know it. That’s a job leadership needs to show up for, if they want to retain any semblance of control over where the path leads.