A global campaign to reduce the fuel we burn (and time we waste) commuting to work.

The average commute time in the US is 25.4 minutes, or 50.8 minutes per day. That equates to over 200 hours per year getting to and from work. Now multiply 200 hours by the one hundred million people who make that commute to work on a daily basis. 

For thirty years we’ve waited for the paperless office. It has finally arrived. What’s changed is the cloud. While today many organizations allow for occasional work-at-home on an as-need basis, only 3% allow all or most of their employees to work at least some time at home on a regular basis. We’ve made great progress building greener, more efficient workplaces. The fact is, we now use more energy commuting to work than our working buildings use for heating, cooling, lighting, and other energy uses.

China spends 9% of GDP on infrastructure, and Europe about 5%, while the US spends 2.4%.  But investing in more technology instead of more roads may be a better bet for America. The Census Bureau expects the US population to grow by 40% over the next four decades, therefore transit demands will increase as well. 

More work-near-home workers would strengthen and revitalize local businesses, especially for economically depressed areas where good-paying but distant employment doesn’t mean moving away.  Today, with longer work hours and two-parent (or single parent) workers, out-of-town commutes are especially costly on families as well as on communities. And when companies close up shop, entire communities aren’t devastated, which increases the odds laid off employes will find new work, especially if the entire community is already strengthened by many other gainfully employed CloudCommuters.

Cloud Commuter workers can mitigate security risks. The attack on the World Trade Center was magnified for Greater New York company’s who’s workers were concentrated in the Twin Towers. Catastrophic weather events that temporarily put entire regions out of business are growing more common. Even a flew epidemic disrupts business. However when an organization can broadly distribute human resources throughout an extended region, a single tragedy is less detrimental. 

Numerous studies demonstrate an increase in worker productivity for organizations by their telecommuting employees. And national aggregate productivity could increase with an array of cloud community facilities across the US, promising less time squandered in traffic, faster job placements from wider search nets, lower costs for start-ups, fewer concentrated disruptions, faster collaboration, faster scaling, faster buys, faster sells.

Cloud commuting can no longer be reserved for employees with special circumstances, but rather a standard business practice—indeed a best practice. The stakes are too high for workers, for families, for our nation and for the planet. If relieving our transportation infrastructure and reducing traffic isn’t reason enough for cloud commuting, several recent reports stating that the nature, pace and consequences of climate change requiring urgent action certainly is. Beginning with the low hanging fruit, each of us can individually mitigate that risk. If the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil can set off a tornado in Texas, what can one more cloud commuter do? Everyone of us who can just as easily work from home, starting tomorrow, should.