Working from home is alleviating a lot of traffic

QBrahme wrote celebrating Upendra time in commute from the reduction 90 to to some 30 minutes Bay Area due companies instituting a work from home policy in response to the potential impact of the coronavirus. You were asked whether or not Apple, Facebook, Google, etc., could implement a permanent one-day-a-week work from home policy that could relieve some congestion.

Your answer was a terse “no.” I think Upendra deserves more than a dismissive “no.”

Why would a rolling one-day-a-week work from home policy not ease some congestion? Employees of our Bay Area technology powerhouses would all benefit and those companies could take a powerful step to address our traffic nightmare.

— Mike Swiontek, San Jose

A And … Q

It seems insensitive to say that something good can come out of this pandemic, but everyone can see that our roads are congestion-free. It’s become convenient and even a pleasure to drive around the

Bay Area. So maybe there’s a good lesson in this. Tens of thousands of employees are now telecommuting from home. They should stay there.

— Paul Jacobs,

Saratoga A And another critic … Q The idea from Upendra was a great idea for controlling traffic, but your response was terrible. — K.J., San Jose

A

My comment made several readers upset. It was based on the fact that lighter traffic, and relatively open roads, eventually spur others to get on the freeway. The nation’s 100 largest urban areas added 30,511 new lane-miles of roads between 1993 and 2017. Even so, congestion rose during those 24 years by 144%.

It’s the theory of induced demand: building more roads and adding more lanes encourages sprawl and as the roads fill, lengthening the time it takes to travel, too.

Back to the original question: Can the current experience of many people working from home spur a sustained push for more telecommuting?

“The short answer is yes,” said John-An-MTCTraffic man. “But there’s much more to consider. COVID-19’s economic disruption already has been enormous, and certainly will accelerate.

“The key question is not so much about support for telecommuting as it is whether many Bay Area jobs now being done remotely will still exist when the emergency is over. If the answer is yes, the pluses, minuses, and tradeoffs of telecommuting will be recalculated not just by employers, but by employees too.

“If the answer is no, we’ll have bigger issues to deal with.” Q My plan to reduce traffic is to allow certain colored cars on the freeway each day — white cars on Wednesdays, red cars on Tuesdays, black cars on Fridays, and so on. Since my pickup is twotone, we could establish a government committee to figure that one out.

— Dennis Cole, Gilroy A We need some humor these days, and you delivered, pal.