Is there anywhere in the US where traffic has gotten noticeably less bad due to WFH policies?

17 comments

1. I highly doubt it. Most people these days are either back to working in person or working a hybrid schedule, not to mention the days when people commute, they’re mostly using public transit in big cities. During the early days of COVID though, NYC was a ghost town. Even Times Square was empty.

2. The interstate near me has been much more empty in my experience.

   I see you’re from Georgia. I went to Atlanta in April and it seemed *worse* somehow.

3. Seattle had a very high percentage of WFH, and was a ghost town during peak Covid. Even though we still have a lot of people doing WFH and hybrid schedules, the commute seems almost as bad now as it was before Covid.

   I think in Seattle’s case, the traffic is bad enough that there was a lot of pent up demand for commuting, so even though a lot of people are doing WFH/hybrid, all the people who used to alter their schedule or take other actions to avoid rush hour are driving during rush hour again, and we’re back to about maximum traffic.

4. It’s gotten noticeably worse here in Birmingham since the pandemic. I chalk it up to all the new arrivals.

5. Hmm, I feel like traffic in Kansas City is less predictable now. So sometimes it feels like there’s less people on the roads than there should be while the opposite is true other times. I don’t know if that means it’s gotten better or not.

6. What is WFH

7. I think a lot of traffic commuting has been replaced by delivery vehicles. So not really a net loss of traffic.

   Also with some companies giving up expensive downtown HQs and re-locating elsewhere in the same metro, it just shifts the traffic from one area to another.

8. Des Moines was never terrible, but it’s still far less now than it was pre pandemic.

9. I believe many transit systems are not yet back to the ridership they were at in January 2020.

   https://www.npr.org/2022/09/11/1122250673/public-transit-is-having-a-slow-comeback-after-the-pandemic

   Kind of the flip-side of your question. Where is there less “traffic”? Your local transit system.

10. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Traffic was much lighter in 2020 and 2021. Now, traffic is pretty much back to pre-pandemic levels since a lot of WFH people have returned back to in-person or hybrid work.

11. Atlanta has absolutely gotten better since the Pandemic. Sure it’s still a mess and some days it’s a HUGE mess. But mostly, day to day, there are noticably fewer drivers.

    My commute is easily half the time (Buckhead to downtown).

12. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, traffic is noticeably lighter on Mondays and on Friday mornings. The rest of the time it’s back to pre-Covid levels if not worse.

13. Around the Chicago area during the first year or more of the pandemic, the traffic was definitely less. However, the people who were driving on the highways and tollways were driving like there were no laws -idiots going well over 90 on wet roads weaving between the few cars that were on the road, as one example. The traffic volume, at least on the road I take to the office, is probably back to near pre-pandemic levels on some days (not so much on Fridays or Mondays, I am guessing due to WFH) but people are still driving like there are no laws and automotive stupidity is at some kind of new level. Chicago area drivers have been aggressive, impatient, and chance-taking for as long as I can remember – at least the mid-70s, but now there’s the unpredictable stupid factor mixed in… it’s scary. I almost prefer the slow moving traffic jam because there was less chance of dips#it-in-the-suv weaving through the gaps at twice the prevailing speed while playing candy crush on his phone (actually saw that).

14. NYC subway

15. Not that I’ve seen. I live the tristate area of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. It has remained heavily trafficked.

16. DC roads were a ghost town in 2020, and they’ve rebounded some but it’s still not quite as busy as it was pre-pandemic. A lot of federal workers are still teleworking regularly.

17. In Baltimore the traffic is pretty much back to normal. There was a minute there where it was pretty chill but Maryland drivers are to traffic what Google Chrome is to RAM – if you give us any space at all we’ll immediately compensate by filling it with accidents and other shenanigans to get back to our usual status quo of regular congestion and pointless hold-ups.

    Interestingly, as one of the masses who went fully WFH two years ago and never went back, it’s not the *moving* traffic that I’ve noticed changing. It’s the fact that my neighborhood’s street parking never clears out during the day time anymore. It’s a very non-grid-layout neighborhood with narrow streets and parking on both sides so it’s actually a bit tricky to navigate now since you so frequently have to squeeze past people on the way in and out. I never had that problem before since I usually left for work later than most people while still returning around the same time.