Stagger government employees to improve Seattle traffic

If we want to help solve the congestion problem in Seattle, the city’s Department of Transportation should learn from the low Veteran’s Day traffic and change the working hours of government employees who deal with the public.

One suggestion: change from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. to 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Doing so would not only ease congestion, it would make it easier to do business with the city.

It’s something that I think makes sense. If we’re going to be honest about trying to do everything we can to make congestion better, I think everything like this should be on the table.

I was talking to Mayor Jenny Durkan recently about the period of maximum constraint, which as we all know is coming up when the viaduct goes down and the tunnel comes in and all the construction starts for the next couple of years. She kept saying “private employers, you’ve got to off-shift.”

“Go to telecommuting, wherein people can still do their job and not come into downtown Seattle to do it,” Durkan said in a recent press conference. “You can still have a very vibrant, efficient work force, and sometimes have them work different shifts, or from home.”

“For some employers, that doesn’t work. We heard that loud and clear, so they’re going to know what works for their workforce and how they get people out of those single-occupancy vehicles and either into car pools, onto transit, walking or biking.”

But why not public employees? Durkan did say that she is open to public employees shifting schedules, and spoke with King County Executive Dow Constantine, who also may be amenable to that.

The focus should be on those workers who don’t need to have face-to-face contact with the public, and why they don’t need to work the 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. schedule. For someone who does work face-to-face, why not make it 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.? That way, other people who are off work at 5 p.m. would actually be able to get work done.

Every time I raise this, the public employees respond with, “Oh sure, blame the public employees.” But if we’re honest about public employees doing this, why shouldn’t everyone try to contribute?

One of the hurdles is that a lot of government employees are union employees, and this is something that would have to be bargained. I’m not sure how you get over that particular part of it, but it’s something that needs to be honestly discussed if we’re all going to make this better.

I mean, look at the roads on Veteran’s Day. Granted, school isn’t in so it’s not all public employees, certainly. But I can guarantee probably 20 percent of our commute would go away if we off-shifted public and government employees.

If private employees are being asked to do this, I think public employees should as well.

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