● As our changing climate has increasingly-deleterious effects, large

organizations are being increasingly required to report on carbon emissions

and to meet benchmarks – to demonstrate environmental sustainability.

Already some Scope reporting is being required to satisfy the procurement

standards for major purchases by the Canadian government and others.

● Scope three emission reporting standards include employee commuting. This

tally will be significant: for example, for banks and credit unions, employee

commuting generates more carbon emissions than all Scope 1 and 2 factors

(building heating, paper, electricity, business travel, etc.) combined.

● Organizations must meet certain benchmarks to qualify for certifications and

accreditations needed for larger domestic and international marketing.

TRP4BC will give BC’s large employers and major trip generators a solid

foundation to meeting the standards and remaining competitive into the

future.

● We expect to support large organizations through obtaining ISO and other

accreditation.

YES, anyone who is doing a standardized job and is working for an employer that has multiple worksites would be a candidate for the closercommutes tactic. For example, an elementary school teacher who has a long commute to work in another district could do a transfer/exchange with a similarly qualified teacher working at a nearly elementary school so both will have a shorter commute. StatsCan data reveals that across the Mission-Abbotsford & Vancouver census metropolitan areas, over 17,500 teaching professionals are not working within their own area of residence. That’s a huge amount of long commuting we can reduce, at no cost to School Districts. Certainly their students will appreciate healthier, better-rested, less-stressed teachers!

Since 2007, the BC Teachers’ Federation has been urging a program of “green lateral exchange/transfers” across district boundaries, so there is no animosity to overcome on this improvement for teachers.

You can help by emailing the Premier and Transportation Minister Rob Fleming to get started on this right away. 

We have good news! We expect health authorities to enthusiastically implement this commute-reducing strategy. Research clearly shows people with closer commutes have less absenteeism, less tardiness, fewer accidents at work, are less prone to depression, obesity and diabetes, are more active and productive, etc., etc. People with long commutes tend to not stay in the job as long – “retention” is a major problem for hospitals and health authorities. It is a major expense to recruit and train new employees, whether they are nurses, nursing assistants, doctors, health records staff, you name it.

Ask your HR department when they will start working across all health locations to reduce commuting to have healthier, happier, more productive staff while reducing costs.

YES, anyone working for a medium or large employer could expect their employer to soon be examining tactics for improving commutes. One way will be to encourage and help arrange swaps. It is in the employer’s best interest. Having employees work closer to home will reduce HR costs and boost productivity – plus it helps the community, local economy and the environment.

Starbucks is one of the few companies in the world that actively encourages shorter staff commutes – it is clearly good for business!

Recently we analyzed the commutes of all employees of the Royal Bank across southern Vancouver Island. We discovered that, for over half the employees, there was someone they could switch locations with right now so both would have a closer commute. The bank had never thought of checking on this. The need and potential to improve is everywhere across the economy.

The concept of people switching work locations is likely centuries old. But, despite all the benefits, strangely it is not part of large employers’ standard practices – yet!

In the mid-1990s, a management consultant named Gene Mullins convinced Key Bank to implement what he called “proximate commuting” at 17 Seattle-area bank branches. Within 15 months, these branches had reduced their total employee commuting miles traveled by a whopping 17%. Over the same period the “control” group of branches that hadn’t participated had a small increase in their total employee commuting miles.

Back then it was expensive (and inaccurate) to calculate commute distances and durations. This is likely part of the reason that Mullins’ program didn’t catch on – except with Starbucks and Boeing who could afford the expensive consulting fees. Now we can access Google Maps data for fractions of a penny to get precise data on thousands of scenarios in an instant. Also a toolkit of explainer videos, how-to manuals and customizable apps/spreadsheets is being finalized for distribution to BC employers.

A challenge we are working to overcome: it has not been clear to employers or government who should be responsible for employee commutes, so opportunities have been missed. We have built a solid, well-researched business case explaining why employers will actually save money by doing the right thing.

The next step is to insist the Premier and his Ministers get the ball rolling on as quickly as possible. Please spread the word.

Great question! Our search of the literature did not yield any consensus about a definition for “short (or close) commute” nor for “long commute.” We created our own definition of a “close commute” based on Statistics Canada’s national household survey’s classifications for mode of transportation and its 10-minute duration intervals. The duration is door-to-door, so a commute using public transit for 20 minutes includes walking to the bus stop and walking from bus to your workplace. Our definition of a “close commute” is as follows, for each direction:

• if driving a car, truck or van, or if riding a bicycle, ten minutes or less
• if taking public transit or walking, 20 minutes or less

Responsibility for a commute-reducing initiative was not obvious – until University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre researchers recently identified the Climate Change Accountability Act as the logical legislation. That Act is administered by the Climate Change Secretariat. We expect the Premier and Minister of Environment & Climate Change Strategy can get the ball rolling by having Cabinet declare two regulations under this Act, and then instructing all other parts of the government to help out.

The hold-up appears to be the absence of an executive-level champion who would stick-handle the introduction through to Cabinet approval, and assignment of operational authority to a Secretariat. We envision the Secretariat contracting the first two years’ operation to the CloserCommutes consortium of BC consultants and non-profits,

Analysts confidently predict that fewer vehicles and less traffic congestion will boost the regional economy by hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

Thanks to Laurie Mitchell, HR specialist with the City of Victoria, for asking that important question. No doubt all HR professionals will want to be informed about that matter.

Firstly, I must emphasize that I am not a lawyer and am not offering legal advice. Please consult with your organization’s lawyer who will provide advice on your organization’s specific circumstances.

There is no mention of employee’s place of residence in the Employment Standards Act of BC. Proximity to workplace is not one of the 11 types of discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act (http://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/eng/content/what-discrimination). My consultations last year with two lawyers and several sessions of Internet searching did not uncover any case law or statutes in Canada or the USA that indicate legal concerns. Proximate commuting, upon which CloseCommute’s methodology is based, has been endorsed and promoted by the US EPA and DoT for over twenty years, with no mention I could find of legal liability. Nonetheless, do consult with your organization’s lawyer to confirm your situation.

Although there appears to be no legislation or regulations about considering area of residence when hiring or transferring, there could well be relevant POLICY in place related to this. Typically policy is created by an organization and can be updated or modified by the organization. I submitted a FOI request to the BC Government’s Public Service Agency, asking whether there were any policies in existence across government related to the consideration of commuting distance or otherwise considering residence location. The official response was, “Although a thorough search was conducted, no records were located in response to your request.”

Secondly, the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre recently (September 2020) released a research report about commute trip reduction. That report was supervised and reviewed by top lawyers. It generally concludes that there should be no problem with either privacy laws (federal and BC) or the mobility section of the Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms. The report does strongly urge that employers do not discriminate at time of hire based on candidates’ place of residence, because there can be many social and economic factors that determine a person’s choice of where to live.

● TRP4BC has been designed as “all carrot, no stick” – with a tiny, necessary requirement for organizations to at least consider which actions (tactics) might help the organization, its employees and its clientele. Why?

○ Because “sticks” (inspection, enforcement, etc.) are complicated, contentious and enormously expensive to administer, and

○ Because experience shows that totally voluntary programs simply don’t get any consideration or traction inside large organizations.

● To illustrate that second point: a few commute trip reduction programs in US states have been quite effective – but only those requiring at least minimal participation by large employers:

○ For example, in Washington State, employers with over 1,000 employees at a single workplace were required only to examine options. Most organizations decided to implement the “parking cash-out” tactic; this triggered an 8% drop in commuting VMT across all those worksites, and a doubling of employees’ transit use.

○ In stark contrast, a similar program was promoted to the 1,000 largest employers in the San Diego region, but was totally voluntary. After two years, none of the large employers had initiated any actions within the program.

● Optional participation is what exists already in B.C., and very few organizations are taking any action at all. That’s partly because there is no one in most organizations who has a role and responsibility for trip reduction, or any awareness of and training in trip reduction tactics.

● Everyone agrees that we need significant transportation change/ improvement across society for environmental and affordability reasons. We can’t load all responsibility on individuals, especially expecting different behaviour from those individuals who simply don’t have better travel options at this point. And governments can only afford to do so much. Therefore large organizations need to join in, taking up some responsibility for helping arrange better trip options where possible – which research consistently shows will inevitably improve their own bottom-lines.

● Business guru Peter Drucker observed that, “What gets measured gets improved.” So the idea is to have all organizations perform a very basic measurement which will reveal how their procedures might be improved. And they must report annually on a web form, describing what actions they have taken, if any. That’s all.

● For change to happen and to stick in a large organization, three things are needed:

1. authority/responsibility (this comes down from the policy level), so that someone in the organization is tasked with the duty to consider what can be done and report back to the top level management ⇐ this authority/ responsibility is provided by TRP4BC’s basic requirement to assess

2. knowledge & tools and access to expertise & services ⇐ TRP4BC will provide these

3. resources (such as $$$ and FTEs) ⇐ the organization would provide these only if it deems an action will be beneficial to the organization’s goals.

● Seattle Children’s Hospital is a great example. SCH was required by the municipality (as part of a re-zoning agreement) to cut drive-alone commuting trips by hospital staff from 78% to 30% by 2030. The hospital has used multiple tactics (parking cash-out, shuttles, free vanpool parking, secure bike storage, etc.), and has reduced drive-alone trips to 33% already.
● SCH says its commuting perks help attract and retain quality staff; it has also avoided spending $20 million on parking infrastructure.
● The University of Victoria is another great example. Faced with the competing needs for space on campus for more student housing and other buildings versus vehicle parking, plus pressure from students, faculty and staff to be more environmentally responsible, UVic negotiated with the local transit authority for a universal transit pass for all students and employees. Now 85.5% of UVic’s students and 70.5% of its employees use sustainable transportation to get to and from campus, and more on-campus housing has been built.

● A major expense (often the single largest expense) for an organization is its employee payroll. Canadian organizations are struggling to adequately hire and retain skilled employees, with this compromising profitability, service delivery, productivity and sustainability.
● Studies from around the globe point to commute trip reduction improving productivity. This productivity improvement comes largely from being able to recruit, motivate and retain a workforce that is healthier (mentally and physically in many ways), less stressed, less prone to making errors and workplace accidents, logs fewer sickness absence days, less likely to consider quitting, and more.

● Organizations are struggling to retain workers. Polling internationally consistently shows that a high percentage of employees would switch to a different employer if the commute was shorter (e.g., “Close to three in four (73 per cent) said they would change jobs to reduce their commute if there were work opportunities closer to home.” – The Real Australian Commute Report).
● Sectors that were quite devastated during the COVID pandemic are experiencing sky-high turnover and need to do everything possible to retain staff. (US statistics reveal 53% annual staff turnover in Retail and 69% annual turnover in Accommodation & Food Services.)
● Some of the tactics supported by TRP4BC involve collaboration by neighbouring large and small businesses. For example, downtown restaurants and retailers might band together to arrange for a cooperative secure bike and e-bike storage facility, so their staff (and their clientele) who wish to cycle can do so without risk of bike theft.

● Only if that organization wants to dive deeply into trip reduction. Making a base level assessment can be done using data the organization already has (“secondary data”) within two hours by someone in HR who is handy with excel spreadsheets. That is the end of the requirement.
● An excel xlsm app – provided free to all organizations – gives a quick, initial assessment of which tactics an organization may wish to investigate further (and also which tactics are less likely to have good ROI due to that organizations’ circumstances).
● Any actions would be taken if (and only if) the organization feels doing so would be beneficial directly to the organization and/or indirectly through improved travel options taken by its employees and its clientele.
● Many potential tactics can be implemented very simply and quickly, not requiring dedicated staff. The potential benefits of some other tactics might be judged by management to justify specific investments in human and other resources. TRP4BC will provide full toolkits, including explainer videos, case studies and crowdsourced advice, to allow managers to quickly get up to speed on the various tactics.

● CleanBC has targets to reduce the carbon emissions from transportation (currently the first or second largest contributor in our urban areas). One target is to reduce VKT by a quarter and double mode share of walking, cycling and transit by 2030. Some possible strategies, however, have unwanted knock-on effects on affordability, road maintenance, equity, air pollution, etc.. For example, a congestion toll hits lower-income workers harder than those in higher income brackets – and a congestion toll will be quite unpopular with commuters/voters. Having electric vehicles may reduce greenhouse gas emissions but the extra weight of EVs will increase road maintenance costs and not help with traffic congestion. We believe trip reduction to have only positive effects.
● The proposed trip reduction program is envisioned to encompass commute trip reduction, clientele trip reduction, and delivery trip reduction. In other jurisdictions, these three programs have always been offered separately, if at all, and rather timidly. We see the efficiency in combining because to have a major impact across a region, all three need the participation of our large employers and major trip generators, working in concert with governments and with the actions of individual citizens.
● Working together should be extremely impactful; for example, imagine the boon to transit operators (and the riders) to have the earnest collaboration of all large employers in their region.
● The system we’ve designed for operating TRP4BC is a model of efficiency. (See the blueprint video from this showcase: https://vimeo.com/showcase/10418500.) We envision TRP4BC being contracted out by the Province to a crack team of multi-disciplinary consultants and non-profits. The operational blueprint features approaches used by software-as-a-service companies and the European EcoFit program, plus crowdsourcing, explainer videos in multiple languages, wikis and forums – with a judicious sprinkling of AI.
● By using a benchmarking and transparency approach, there will be no need for, nor expectation of, monitoring and policing each establishment – so there will be no “inspectors” or on-site consulting. The entire TRP4BC operation will only have a handful of paid staff, plus a dozen contracted researchers/specialists/developers. Its proposed development and operating budget is tiny compared to the projected HR cost savings for the Government in the education and health sectors alone, so it might be viewed as serving the private and non-profit sectors “for free.”

● A VKT charge/ tax/ toll is an interesting complementary strategy for governments to consider – this is not an either/or situation.

● A VKT charge would reduce some discretionary trips. It would not, in itself, provide higher quality travel options – it is arguably all stick, no carrot – and could worsen affordability for lower-income citizens who have no other viable option (at this point) to driving alone. Meanwhile higher-income citizens would not be dissuaded from any extraneous trips that could have been conducted using active travel (walking, cycling or transit).

● We believe that a VKT tax would be best implemented in addition to TRP4BC. A VKT charge could be implemented quite easily in BC by having ICBC convert vehicle insurance policies to what’s referred to as “PAYD insurance” (PAYD = Pay-As-You-Drive; see briefing note to the CTAP process at the bottom of this PDF).

● Perhaps regional directors who have recently advocated for the Province to begin TRP4BC might consider advocating for the Province to implement PAYD insurance as well?

● TRP4BC is projected to have a huge impact on VKT and mode share. For example, experience has shown that the parking cash-out tactic alone could double transit use, and TRP4BC’s reach includes over half of BC’s workforce. Increasing carpooling, guaranteed ride home, peer-worksite swaps, safe & active routes to school, and each of the other tactics have all been demonstrated to significantly improve people’s travel options, and hence their behaviour.

● We can expect that TRP4BC’s projected operating cost (<$9 million annually to provide tools and know-how support to over 8,700 large employers who employ over 58% of BC’s workforce) will be fully offset by the comparatively huge savings for the Government’s public sector organizations. For example, improving commute options has been demonstrated to reduce sickness absences; BC is currently spending over $300 million per year to cover teacher absences and over $1 billion annually to cover health sector employee absences. Even a 1% improvement in those budget items will more than cover TRP4BC’s budget; we might see 5% or 10%.

● Reducing the need by many people for owning and operating a personal vehicle ($7,000 to $10,000 per year) – or a second family vehicle – will keep hundreds of millions of dollars p.a. in our provincial economy.

● Reducing traffic congestion is expected to ease congestion’s current billion-dollar-per-year chokehold on BC’s economy.

● Reducing VKT will help reduce (or at least minimize any increase in) BC’s multi-billion-dollar annual road maintenance costs, especially as heavier EVs become ubiquitous.

● Improving the cost of travel choices will have outsized positive affordability impact for BC’s lower-income families for whom transportation currently is the second largest household budget item (less than housing, and more than food).

Toggle Content● Actions on commuting, clientele trip and delivery will contribute to economic sustainability – productivity, profitability, and recruiting & retaining staff, etc. – and to societal sustainability by playing a positive role in society (reducing pollution, less traffic congestion, improved affordability, improved social trust, etc.).

● Increasingly organizations are being required to report on environmental impacts. Scope 3 reporting includes carbon emissions from worker commutes. TRP4BC will help large organizations address their scope three emissions before this reporting impacts the organization’s ability to sell to and operate in some jurisdictions. (The Canadian Government has begun setting scope requirements for its procurement, for example, and the European Union is setting increasingly strict standards for imports.)

● Scope three emission reporting standards include employee commuting. This tally will be significant: for example, for banks and credit unions, employee commuting generates more carbon emissions than all Scope 1 and 2 factors (building heating, paper, electricity, business travel, etc.) combined.

● Organizations will need to meet certain benchmarks to qualify for certifications and accreditations needed for larger domestic and international marketing. TRP4BC will give large employers and major trip generators a solid foundation to meeting the standards and remaining competitive into the future. We expect to support large organizations in obtaining ISO and other accreditation.

● BTW: Despite stacks of scientific studies pointing to improvements for organizations, so far academic programs in business, transportation engineering, human resources and climate change do not yet teach about large organizations’ best commute and clientele trip reduction strategies and opportunities, as part of their core curricula. No doubt this will change as cutting-edge programs like the proposed TRP4BC are rolled out in many jurisdictions.

to be clear, the overall goal isn’t that trips are always reduced in distance. For example, cycling or taking a bus to work might cover the same distance or even more than if driving a
car, but could be preferred by some who like the experience and lower cost. Rather we are
aiming for an improvement in the quality of travel options for commuting, trips and delivery. No one should be forced to use any particular mode of travel. Trip (or travel) option quality improvement program might be more accurate, although that’s a bit of a mouthful, and planners are more familiar with the trip reduction term.