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Remember commuting? That thing you used to do when
you’d get in your car half-asleep, pop on The Daily, and drive 40 minutes to your
company’s parking lot...then do the same thing in reverse eight hours
later?
During the pandemic, the word “commute” has become
nearly as outdated as “doth.” In the spring, the remote work revolution
sent tens of millions of Americans out of their cubicles and into their
living rooms, significantly reducing the number of people traveling to
offices each day.
That’s probably not going to change in the near
term. Only 28% of U.S. employees expect to return to their workplaces by
the end of 2020, according to a recent Conference Board survey.
Forgive my unsophisticated writing, but...this is a
huge deal! We should talk about the effects of a drastically lower level of
commuting.
In the before
times...
Commutes were getting longer. The
average U.S. commute grew to a record 27.1 minutes in 2018, meaning the
average American was spending more than nine full calendar days (225 hours)
traveling to and from work.
How were they doing it?
- 73.6%
drove by themselves in a private car.
- And
despite how crowded the subway felt during rush hour, transit only
accounted for a tiny share of commutes. In fact, more people worked
from home (5.3%) than took public transportation to work (4.9%) in
2018.
Commuting is costly. Off the top of my head,
expenses include gas, wear on the car, and potentially tolls and parking.
But commuting has other costs, too. Unless you have a Tesla, your car is a
grade-A carbon emitter. Studies show your mental health
suffers when you sit in traffic. And what about the most precious commodity
of all: time. What could you
be doing with those 27.1 minutes you’re not focusing on the
road?
We don’t have to
guess
The pandemic has revealed what happens when fewer
than a third of employees go to the office. So far, we’ve learned...
- The savings are real. Upwork
found that $758 million is
saved each day when former car commuters switch to remote work. That’s
led to total savings of $90 billion since the pandemic began.
- Media consumption is changing. For
example, public radio giant NPR said it lost about 25%
of its audience in Q2 2020 over last year when commuters evaporated.
- Cars will gain at transit’s expense. More
than 60% of respondents to a Cars.com survey
plan to use cars instead of public transportation when they resume
commuting to the office. That’s simply because cars are viewed as the
safer option in these pandemic times, despite heavy investments in
subway cleaning and studies that show fears of viral spread in public
transit are unwarranted.
One can’t help but wonder about second- and
third-order implications of a commuting plunge, too—like what a drop in
toll revenues means for future infrastructure investments, or what an extra
~30 minutes of sleep means for worker productivity.
And there are many things we just don’t know yet,
like the environmental impact or exactly how many fewer people are on the
road every morning (of course, many people reading this still travel to
their workplace).
Looking ahead...it might be an interesting
activity for readers who aren’t commuting anymore to reflect on your new
routine. Are you sleeping more? Have you begun to work out in the morning?
A walk around the block before logging on? Reply and let me know.
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