Client Gridlock

For me, driving is a necessary evil.

But living in leafy New York City suburbia, public transportation isn’t much of an option. For the nearly quarter century I worked in Manhattan, I would eschew taxis when I had appointments outside the office and avail myself of the New York City subway system and its 656 miles of track to take me where I needed to go.

But driving? The only way I would drive to the city was at 5 am on a Sunday morning. For me, root canal is preferable to idling on a jammed avenue and inching along amidst 10 or 12 changes of a traffic light.

I mention these misadventures in motoring because invariably, one primary fear clients express when they learn their incumbent accounting firm is about to enter into a merger is “how much farther do I have to travel to get there?”

There are other fears of course, but for now let’s focus on the location logistics. 

I once had two firms in the Midwest thisclose to joining forces, but seller firm bailed at the 11^th hour because now his clients would have to navigate one of the city’s most densely traveled roads to get to the new offices, a thoroughfare of which featured several miles of the dreaded “no left turn” signs.

But there’s good news if you’re lucky enough to reside in the following cities – Birmingham, Ala., Indianapolis, Kansas City, Cleveland and Richmond, Va.

Those cities were rated best in terms of traffic density by GPS manufacturer TomTom in their annual Traffic Index, which ranks gridlock in some 218 cities across the country.

TomTom studied 2014 trip data from its 400 million users to quantify traffic levels in some of the world's largest communities, including the 53 most-populous U.S. metro areas. According to statistics, congestion adds roughly 20 percent to a trip destination and during evening rush hour can tack on up to 46 percent more time.

The Transportation Institute estimates that gridlock costs the U.S. economy $121 billion.

On the flip side here are the venues with the worst traffic: No. 1 is Los Angeles, followed by San Francisco, Honolulu (ah, but the scenery must take some of the sting out of sitting in a car) New York and Seattle. I find it hard to believe that Boston is not in the Top 5 and believe me I could have watched an entire Red Sox game in some of the jams I’ve experienced up there.

So the next time a client asks about traveling time, some forward thinking CPA firm owner in the low density cities might be advised to show them the TomTom survey.

And if your firm unfortunately falls in the latter category, you could always explain the benefits of public transportation. Or at the least soften them up with a complimentary GPS application.