Education of an Engineer

I joined the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) in the 1970’s armed with both engineering and business degrees, fully prepared to help design, build and manage a transportation system that would move as many vehicles as possible quickly and safely. We used the most advanced technology available at that time to design and manage a traffic system that would be the envy of the transportation world. After a few years, however, while we were moving more and more vehicles, even more people were driving, and we were losing the fight to reduce congestion. Even after widening the roads a few years later, congestion was the same, or even worse.

Frustrated, I looked for alternatives. Fortunately, I had taken some economics classes at the business school and stumbled upon the idea that if given the proper incentives, people would take discretionary trips at lower demand times. That is, if we could make the cost of making the trip or benefit of not making the trip high enough, we might have an impact on the growing congestion problem in the Twin Cities. Our first attempt, congestion pricing, was eventually implemented in a limited way as the MnPASS lanes, but generally there is little political appetite for increasing the cost of travel.

Another option arose in 2008, when the federal government challenged state governments to come up with ideas to deal with congestion. Tolling was one option, but the Feds were also interested in telecommuting a way that would lead people to decide against making trips during congested times. By this time, I had joined the Humphrey School’s State and Local Policy Program, and after MnDOT was awarded one of these grants with our help, I led a team that designed, branded, implemented and evaluated eWorkPlace-MN, the largest and most successful telecommuting initiative in the country, which ran from 2009 – 2017. Among the overall findings, federal evaluators confirmed our finding that the initial 3.2-million-dollar initiative had a return of 9 to 1.

Given this work, we were not surprised when nearly 50% of all workers successfully transitioned to working from home in response to the COIVD-19 pandemic. Previously congested freeways became free-flowing and air quality around the world improved. However, looking closely, it became clear that these benefits were not shared evenly. The people of color disproportionately perform jobs that cannot be done at home and people with a college education are 10 times more likely to be able to work from than those with less than a high school education. Consequently, the top 25% of earners, who can work from home, have bounced back nicely but the bottom 25%, who largely work at restaurants, hotels, and other theme parks, etc. have experienced job losses of more than 20%.

Women are also less likely to enjoy the benefits of telework. While more women working full time have a bachelor’s degree than men indicating they could more easily perform their jobs from home, women are dropping out of the workforce at higher percentages than men during the pandemic. Professional obligations are losing priority to other roles traditionally performed by women, such as caring for children, elders, and others in the family that are also more likely to be at home instead of school or daycare.

This all adds up to the realization that, in my nearly 50 years of working in transportation, I have learned that 2 plus 2 does not always equal 4, and policy considerations are as important as engineering solutions. I am concerned that the COVID-related changes to how we work will create a bigger divide between “haves” and “have nots” across the whole workplace and society. Recently, on November 12, 2020, Fed Chair Powell stated that, “The pandemic has accelerated existing trends in the economy and society, including the use of technology, telework and automation. This will have lasting effects on how people live and work.” We need to quickly ascertain the long-term impact of telecommuting on transit service availability, and paying for the current transportation system, while trying to preserve the reductions in air pollution, and developing strategies to deal with negative impacts on women, minority and other low-income communities.

Bio:

Adeel Lari joined the State and Local Policy Program at the Humphrey School in 2005 after a 30-year career at the Minnesota Department of Transportation. His research at the Humphrey focuses on innovative transportation policy, from new finance options to telework and models for equitably deploying connected and automated vehicle technologies.