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Before you get it all strange and horrible, there were those things called rush hours. Suppose that from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m., many people would leave their home to go to work or school, filling roads, buses, subways, and bike lanes. Then, from 3pm to 7pm, the trips would be reversed.
Then came the global pandemic and national shutdowns, and things were quiet for a while. In early spring 2020, vehicle mileage fell by 40%, according to analytics company StreetLight Data. Those who lived near the highways and usually the busy streets of the city enjoyed clear skies and happy tranquility.
Now, rush hour is back. Streetlight Data estimates that U.S. vehicles traveled 20 percent more miles in March 2021 compared to March 2021. But the traffic patterns are very different. In many large U.S. subway sites, what used to be a morning rush is like a jog. Instead, traffic is slowly generated throughout the day, ending in a brisk afternoon.
In the San Francisco subway area, for example, the number of vehicle miles has dropped by nearly half from 7 to 8 a.m. late winter compared to the previous year. But the miles traveled during the afternoon dam, between 5 and 6 p.m., go down by only a quarter. Vehicle mileage in the area has been down 25 percent overall this winter.
Traffic is a disease, experts say, that provides insight into the economic viability, goals and nature of a region. Now, as more Americans are vaccinated, return to work and school, and regain social life, government officials are eager to learn about the closure of pandemic-era travel behavior with closures and more distant labor policies. what could have been here. Some cities fund research to explore these questions; the answers will probably point to the future of the city.
The travel behavior of those who work from home is not as easy as it seems. According to research on telecommunications prior to the pandemic, people who work from home tend to wake up in the afternoon. Many go to the roads to go to cafes, libraries, business meetings and customer areas. Jonathan Stiles, an Ohio State University postdoctoral researcher, has studied the travel behavior of teleworkers and found that people with flexible working or telecommunications-adapted schedules often use that flexibility to stay home in the morning, but leave later. One of his studies they found that a third of remote workers stay in one place all day. If more people feel safe moving, they will likely increase traffic.
Other researchers point out that allowing people to do teleworking sometimes allows workers to move to areas closer to dense urban areas and neighborhoods. In the end may end up driving more, to make the same types of requests as before.
Some officials like to return traffic, to a point. “You think it’s positive. It’s more economic activity, ”says Darin Chidsey, chief operating officer of the Southern California Governs Association, a regional organization that represents 191 cities. Being out of town in the afternoon now means“ people are picking up children and taking them to school, doing activities , shopping “.
His organization wants to understand what happens almost in the post-pandemic period so that it can plan for post-pandemic realities. Last year He began working with UC Davis researchers to understand how the pandemic affected local employment, home organization, shopping, vehicle ownership, travel patterns, and overall equity, and what lasting changes might occur. If researchers find that more people from home will continue to work, that’s fine open opportunities for cities and towns once thought to be one-bedroom communities – to revitalize the local downtown and ultimately generate more local tax revenue.
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