Broadband could ease traffic congestion

It's good, but that good?

By Tim Richardson • Get more from this author

Posted in IT Director, 7th October 2004 12:31 GMT

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Britain's traffic jams could be a little less sticky if more people used broadband instead of travelling. Working from home, using the internet for shopping and staggering trips to work could help cut the UK's chronic congestion, a report out today claims.

The report Broadband: the role for communications in beating congestion is supported by BT, the Confederation for British Industry (CBI), motoring group the RAC, and Bradford University. It notes that if car journeys were reduced by 10 per cent it could save 14.5 billion miles a year.

Said Edmund King, executive director of the RAC Foundation: "If each employee could work from home just one day per week, for example, we would see a twenty per cent cut in traffic, equivalent to the school run. Today's technology is better and cheaper so more employees have the chance to work from home, at least some of the time."

In 2003 research found that a quarter of people who use the net as part of their everyday work would like the chance to work from home. Unfortunately, only one in ten bosses is happy to let them do so. ®