Is teleworking worth the effort?
By Andrew Einhorn at OhMyGov. After the passage of Rep. Danny Davis’s telecommuting bill in the House yesterday, OhMyGov! decided to rummage through some statistics and determine if telecommuting is all it’s cracked up to be. What we found was indeed interesting. First, the basics; In a 2005 poll conducted by ABC News, The New York Times and the Washington Post, it was determined that the average round-trip commute for an employee is 32 miles. If we use the statistic from the Environmental Protection Agency that the gas mileage for cars sold between 1997 and 2007 averaged 20 miles per gallon (mpg), then the average federal employee would save 1.6 gallons of gas for every day of telecommuting. Assuming the person telecommuted one day a week for 48 weeks out of the year – this accounts for sick leave and vacations – that same person would save 76.8 gallons of gas a year, or $306 per annum at the current national average gas price of $3.983 per gallon. The federal government employs 2.7 m
