More WFH and Traffic

More about the effect of pandemic-based WFH on traffic patterns, and speculation regarding whether the changes are permanent.

Wejo is an outfit that is "reimagining the world we live in with connected vehicle data."  The fact that "connected vehicle data" sounds like something I'd really like to know a lot more about tells you all you need to know about me.

USA Today summarizes* some of Wejo's recent reporting on rush hour:

While Americans are gradually getting back to some semblance of normal, traffic data suggests that the morning drive has changed drastically – and it may never go back to pre-COVID-19 patterns.

In short, rush-hour traffic is more spread out and, generally, has shifted later in the morning as Americans are more able to avoid heavy traffic periods due to remote work...

To be sure, as the pandemic continues to subside, many Americans are expected to return to the office after Labor Day, likely increasing overall traffic volumes. But traffic experts expect that increasingly flexible work arrangements are likely to give many Americans the ability to avoid the old-fashioned blitz to the workplace altogether.

“The morning rush hour has gotten later and it’s gotten flatter,” says Daniel Tibble, director of data science and analytics for Wejo. “In almost all scenarios, traffic is not dropping as much in the later hours and is dropping more in the earlier hours.”

So rush hour seems to be changing, and for the good:  "flatter" means spread out, reducing congestion.

Whether this is permanent depends on the Great WFH Debate:  will there be a significant increase in people working from home after the pandemic is over (whatever "over" means)?  There will be impacts well beyond traffic:  commercial real estate and associated restaurants and other businesses; car and especially gas sales; family dynamics; population density (what happens when suddenly a whole lot of people can live wherever they want?), and etcetera.

Labor Day seems to be the point on the calendar when many businesses will be expecting their WFH staff to be coming back, so we've got a couple of months to see what happens.  Should be interesting.

 

 * - Poorly.