In his 1976 book, The Telecommunications-Transportation Tradeoff, Jack Nilles posited that telecommunications had evolved to the point it could substitute or “trade off” against transportation demand associated with getting workers to centralized commuter offices.

For Nilles, the idea occurred to him while crawling along congested Los Angeles freeways to commute to his job as an aerospace engineer along with thousands of his fellow Angelenos. This was at a time when advanced telecommunications technology was T-1 lines that could simultaneously transmit data and voice telephone calls, allowing downtown offices to link to satellite offices in the sprawling L.A. basin located where their employees reside rather than having them travel to the downtown office buildings.

Two decades later, the Internet did the same thing but brought the connection straight into peoples’ homes. That greatly enhanced the mathematics of Nilles’ tradeoff. Much if not most knowledge work could as the Internet and personal communications devices evolved could be done in home offices — no transportation or even satellite offices required.

A new tradeoff is now in the offing. This one proposes to make commuting worth the personal time and expense cost incurred by knowledge workers by making commute in offices more luxe, comfy spaces instead of stuffy, florescent lit cube farms.

“People and companies know that offices are changing and that offices need to start feeling maybe a little bit more like hotels, with great service, seamless technology, inspiring design, and workplaces that create a true sense of place,” says Annie Dean, chief strategy officer for the building operations and experience division at CBRE, a large commercial real-estate services firm.

Dean’s new role overseeing CBRExIndustrious Building Experience Lab juxtaposes with her former role with software company Atlassian, where she led Atlassian’s Team Anywhere that emphasized virtual, decentralized knowledge work. “We have 13,000 employees spread across the globe, and individuals can choose their working location every day,” Dean said then. “It’s about how we work, not where we work.” 

In her new role, it’s the where is paramount: making the centralized commuter (CCO) office a destination worth the drive.

The question is whether knowledge workers in highly congested metro areas like the L.A. Basin will find value in the tradeoff. Certainly office space can be overhauled to make collaboration, training and brainstorming sessions more comfortable and enjoyable instead of the usual layout of seas of cubicles surrounded by closed door offices that has been the standard setup since at least the 1970s.  

In these big metros, many knowledge workers aren’t likely to see the value when crushing commutes – like in the San Francisco Bay Area — are factored in. In such high cost metro areas, the predominant tradeoff is housing affordability versus commute time that tends to push knowledge workers to metro fringes were housing costs are lower. That typically means longer commutes. Spiffing up the CCO won’t alter the math for many of these knowledge workers. The time sucking trip it isn’t likely to be seen as worthwhile aside perhaps from an occasional trip each month more akin to business travel to professional gatherings involving overnight stays involving a true hotel.