A Simple Solution

I commute to work every day from Oakland to Redwood Shores. It's about a 35 minute drive with no traffic, but of course, on most days it can take me anywhere from that 35 minutes to over an hour to make the drive either way depending on the time I leave and the level of traffic, and whether there is an accident.

There are certain days of the year, like today, when it is a holiday for many people, but not for me, and I have to admit that I don't even mind working today because the traffic is so much lighter and easier to negotiate.

So, it got me thinking. Couldn't we start to solve two problems with one easy solution?

Let's stagger a number of mandated holidays throughout the year so that some large number of people are always off from work at various times. In this way we could reduce the number of cars on the road, cutting down on both greenhouse gasses and traffic congestion.

Another option would be mandated days to work at home, also meeting the criteria above and contributing to a solution for two problems.

Since we don't seem to have the political will or financial werewithal for large public transportation projects to get people out of their cars, and until we make it feasible to junk most of the cars on the road today in favor of hybrid technologies, electrical cars, alternative fuels, we could start down the road of easing climate issues caused by auto pollution and the frustration most of us feel at being stuck in traffic every day with this kind of a simple solution.

It would require some behavioral change and management change to allow or encourage people to work from home one or more days a week (and have that mandated - perhaps by company or last name or some systematic way), and would certainly take some managing to mandate people taking a holiday, but not driving, but you have to start somewhere, so why not with this.