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The Barrie Telecommuting Project

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Environmental Action Barrie / Living Green has existed for over 15 years to bring the people of Barrie and surrounding communities together to learn about environmental issues and to change habits in favour of environmentally "friendlier" practices. Living Green's board of directors includes personnel with backgrounds in teaching, the civil service, law, industrial chemistry, commerce, and energy systems.

What are they doing?

Since the mid-1990s, the City of Barrie has been seeking to reduce commuter traffic on Highway 400. The City of Barrie was Canada's first municipality to create a plan to develop telecommuting options. The impact study, workshop, education and outreach activities of the Barrie Telecommuting Project are designed to stimulate behavioural changes within the target audiences so that the project outcomes are sustainable and consumer/market driven.

There will be three streams of activity in support of the overall goal of building awareness and use of telecommuting in the Barrie/Highway 400 corridor as a sustainable and effective option to highway commuting. The creation of a dedicated telecommuting facility for the Highway 400 area offers the first opportunity to capture hard data in an Ontario/Canadian context. The three streams will be:

  • An impact study involving four tenants (up to twenty workers) of the Barrie telecommuting centre over twelve months, which will support greater understanding of the benefits and issues for businesses and workers considering telecommuting;
  • Workshops, open houses, and public forums to disseminate telecommuting ideas or approaches as revealed by the impact study. This will include teaching employees and conference workshop participants how to calculate the economic, social, and environmental impacts of telecommuting so, if feasible, as to enable them to build their individual cases for switching to telecommuting. The employees, in turn, will be able to present these cases to their employers as rationale for instigating telecommuting as part of a new corporate operating strategy;
  • Education and outreach activities promoting and modeling telecommuting as a sustainable transportation option. This will feature 'Green Screen' films, radio and newspaper campaigns, and three public events.

The "Lessons Learned" as a result of the Barrie Telecommuting Project will encourage and enable telecommuting centres in locations across the country, including - potentially - Vancouver, other parts of the GTA, Calgary, Burlington/Hamilton, and Montreal.

Where can you find more information?

Barrie Telecommuting Website




Date modified:
2010-02-03