Reply to Will DC resume commuter traffic patterns in the fall?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Wow, I was the OP and last I checked this thread, there was only one response. So I'm surprised that it mushroomed & interested to read the competing theories & arguments.

I need to go back and read all the responses, but the point of my post was that I hope the regular patterns are resumed. Obviously, that helps commuters like me, but it also helps downtown. If my commute is a daily nightmare, I'll work from home as much as possible. [b]My organization is shifting to a hybrid model where all employees will have the choice about where they work[/b]. I'm not going to waste an hour in bumper-to-bumper traffic each way (especially for a drive that used to be 30 minutes most of the time.)

The pandemic has killed off most of the small restaurants and shops near my office - if office workers don't come back, neither will those small businesses and the jobs they create. I understand why NWDC residents may want Beach Drive just for bikes and may want to keep cars off Conn Ave, but it's not a net benefit for the city as a whole.[/quote]

This is exactly why the patterns pre-pandemic won't resume. Everyone will be on a hybrid model where they come in for a day or two every couple of weeks.[/quote]

Maybe, maybe not. My colleagues desperately want to be back as much as possible, as do at least some of our bosses. If my commute remained reasonable, I would probably go to the office 4 days per week. If it's much worse than pre-pandemic times, I'll stay on Zoom as much as possible. Same for many others. And the thing that I've seen with reopening our office is that this is very much a sort of collective action dilemma - it's only worth coming in if there are enough people there to make the experience worthwhile. No point in going to the office just to get on Zoom. If you make commuting more time-consuming and unpleasant, it will have a ripple effect that may discourage even those who *don't* have lousy commutes from coming in.

To the PP who said other businesses will pop up to replace the coffee shops and clothing stores that have gone away, maybe but I wouldn't be so sure. If office buildings are half occupied or less, who would these new shops and restaurants rely on for customers? I've been around here long enough to remember DC before it became hip. There were vast swaths of downtown that were completely dead on weekends because there was no point in opening up without the usual weekday office workers. I see the same thing happening again to a lot of the traditional downtown parts of DC, and even to neighborhoods like Dupont.[/quote]

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