post-pandemic

US Work Trip Access in 2021 (Journey to Work Data)

Wendell Cox — Wed, 25 Jan 2023 15:17:23 -0500

The following table provides US work access data for the 56 major metropolitan areas (over 1,000,000 population). A previous article highlighted the huge increase telework access (working from home).

Teleworking tripled from pre-pandemic 2019 to 2021 to 17.9 percent. The 2019 figure had been the highest ever recorded (5.7 percent). At the same time, transit use fell by approximately one-half, to 2.5 percent, the lowest ever recorded.

There was also a record decline in auto use, principally because commuters were telecommuting in much larger numbers.

Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, an international public policy firm located in the St. Louis metropolitan area. He is a founding senior fellow at the Urban Reform Institute, Houston, a Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy in Winnipeg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California. He has served as a visiting professor at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers in Paris. His principal interests are economics, poverty alleviation, demographics, urban policy and transport. He is co-author of the annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey and author of Demographia World Urban Areas.

Mayor Tom Bradley appointed him to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1985) and Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed him to the Amtrak Reform Council, to complete the unexpired term of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1999-2002). He is author of War on the Dream: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life and Toward More Prosperous Cities: A Framing Essay on Urban Areas, Transport, Planning and the Dimensions of Sustainability.

Photo: Las Vegas Urban Area, with 71% of Nevada’s population, it is the 5th densest major urban area in the United States as of 2020 (following San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Jose, New York and Honolulu. Credit: Stan Shebs, downtown Las Vegas, Nevada via Wikimedia under CC 3.0 License.

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Are Big Cities Past Their Prime?

Tim Hains — Fri, 22 Jul 2022 19:50:32 -0400

New York. Los Angeles. Boston. San Francisco. Call them America's "superstars." With mega populations, these urban hubs have long reigned as the nation's economic, social, and cultural capitals. But big cities have also been the hardest hit by the pandemic. "Zoom towns" are springing up across the country as professionals leave the city in droves. Even more, the pandemic has brought economic and social inequality into sharp focus for the nation's lawmakers. And some, particularly in large cities that boast the most obvious cases of such inequality, are enacting new progressive policies and laws that seek to combat inequality. For some, this means a new financial structure that makes city life less compelling for those in higher income brackets. Will megacities keep their magnetism in the wake of Covid-19? Or are their best days behind them?

Scholar & Author Joel Kotkin joins Jennifer Hernandez, Attorney & Environmental Advocate, along with Historian & Professor Margaret O'Mara and Ed Glaeser, Economist & Author, to debate the topic.

Watch the video:

Read the rest and see more related videos at Real Clear Politics.

Domestic Migration Map

New Geography — Thu, 28 Apr 2022 17:26:19 -0400

Domestic migration has accelerated in the past few years as Americans relocate — typically from larger urban areas to mid-sized and smaller metros. Whether this trend ultimately will reshape parts of America by voting with their feet and moving and reduce the polarization between red and blue states remains to be seen.

See a U.S. map using relocation data, from Allied Van Lines: visit the interactive map.

Downtown San Francisco Happy Hours; Thursday is the New Friday

Wendell Cox — Tue, 29 Mar 2022 15:05:16 -0400

Chase DiFeliciantonio reports in the March 28, 2020 San Francisco Chronicle that efforts to attract office workers back to downtown San Francisco, and consequently to restore the busy “happy hours” at bars are faltering. “Monday and especially Fridays are seeing less foot traffic downtown, which makes midweek after-work happy hours more likely. Some people still working from home are also choosing neighborhood saloons closer to home rather than venturing to other parts of town.”

A financial district bar owner characterized the phenomenon of a packed bar after work is “not dead, but in a coma.”

A bartender aid that “Thursday is the new Friday.”

The article also referred to research findings predicting that workers will use “three midweek days for in-office work, while working remotely on Mondays and Fridays.”

43% of Canada’s Employed Worked Majority of Hours at Home: January 2022

Wendell Cox — Mon, 21 Mar 2022 22:58:48 -0400

Statistics Canada reports that remote work reached a pandemic era recently.

“Since the onset of the pandemic, the Labour Force Survey has been tracking the proportion of non-absent workers who worked from home. During the week of January 9 to 15, more than 4 in 10 (43.0%) of those employed worked most of their hours from home, the highest proportion since the initial lockdown in April 2020. Among those who did not usually work any of their hours at home, 30.3% worked at home for at least part of the week.”

This was included in the Statistics Canada January monthly bulletin on urban transit ridership.

Webinar: The Case for Suburbia

New Geography — Tue, 22 Feb 2022 17:17:42 -0500

When: March 8, 2022 at 12PM (CT)
Where: Join on Zoom
The seeming success of compact cities and the supposed dangers of sprawl to the climate have led to pushback against sprawling, car-dominated cities. Join us as we discuss the environmental case for suburbia.

Standardizing the Gig Hybrid Work Week?

Wendell Cox — Mon, 21 Feb 2022 11:57:30 -0500

San Francisco Examiner reporter Jeff Elder describes efforts to coordinate hybrid work schedules that involve working part time at home and part time in the office (“Tech industry’s ‘three-day work week’ may change the future of the office forever”). Elder notes that tech workers, in the Bay Area seem to be gravitating toward working at home on Mondays and Fridays, and working in the office Tuesday through Friday.

Jeff Bellisario, executive director of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute told the Examiner. “There’s going to have to be some experimentation. We’re going to end up somewhere around three days a week in the office. As we talk to companies, they increasingly say around three days in the office is what they want from employees.”

According to Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University, “In 2022, employees will increasingly be required to come in on set days, with the payoff of working from home on the other days.”

A Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday work in the office week might offer employees an organized period to maximize collaboration, as opposed to less formalized arrangements in which employee attendance would be more random.

Such an arrangement would seem to have potential to maximize Tech employee productivity in the Bay Area, the world’s largest Gig labor market.

New Toronto to London (ON) Train Ridership Half that of a Bus

Wendell Cox — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 16:32:33 -0500

The Toronto Star reports that the new Toronto to London, Ontario “GO” Transit commuter train is carrying far fewer passengers than the average transit bus. (see: GO’s new London-Toronto train is moving fewer passengers than a half-full TTC bus). During the week of November 15, ticket sales were only 32 per scheduled train.

The service, according to the Star, is operated with trains with six cars each, with a capacity of 162 passengers. This means is operating at three percent of capacity (that assumes all riders travel the entire distance from London to Union Station in downtown Toronto).

According to The Star, the GO trip takes nearly four hours each way between Toronto and London. VIA Rail, Canada, the national passenger rail system operates services between the two terminals in 2:10.

Metrolinx, which operates the GO train system across the Greater Golden Horseshoe, indicates that ridership remains about 75% less than normal, due to the pandemic. Even if the new London service were to attract four times the ridership (which returning to normal would accomplish over the entire network), less than 15% of the capacity would be utilized. This is a patronage level that could be easily handled by a few buses, which would also permit provision of trips throughout the day.

On the assumption that the public purpose of this service is serving people, the least expensive option should be provided --- that which attracts the highest number of passengers for the least cost. It is inconceivable that this could involve six car trains, and not even one-car trains.

This is not intended to criticize Metrolinx or GO trains, since similar decisions have been made by governments and transit operators virtually around the world, favoring trains, regardless of the cost. There are obviously places where rail transit is justified, but regrettably, not in many of the places it has been built in recent decades. The result has been to provide considerably less transit service and fewer rides than would have been the case if more efficient alternatives were adopted --- and alternatives that are time competitive with the car.

The University of Toronto’s Professor Shoshanna Saxe “hit the nail on the head,” noting “It’s very hard to attract people to transit when it’s slower than driving,” The problem not limited to the London to Toronto service. For example, international research found that within the Toronto CMA, cars provide 4.5 times the 30-minute job access as transit, despite the fact that it is hard to find a better transit system in North America.

Employment access should be the principal driver of transit policy, with emphasis on obtaining the largest increases among lower-income households that have less automobile access. That would lead to less poverty, an improved economy and more jobs.

The issue is not cars, trains or buses, it is outcomes for people. Transit’s potential can only be achieved if available resources are committed to maximizing ridership, especially to work, which is the most important trip.

Note: As a matter of interest, Metrolinx made a pre-pandemic-pandemic map of ridership by train line available (April to September 2020).

Tentative Work from Home Estimates Based on ACS 2020 Experimental Data

Wendell Cox — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 12:46:02 -0500

The pandemic has interfered substantially with the annual release of the American Community Survey (ACS). The Census Bureau indicates that “Due to the challenges of fielding a household survey during the COVID-19 pandemic, household nonresponse increased substantially in the American Community Survey, with evidence of increased nonresponse bias in many statistics.”

Fortunately, the Census Bureau went to considerable efforts to release the 2020 American Community Survey 1-Year Experimental Estimates yesterday (November 30). The Census Bureau recommends caution in comparing the data (for the nation, the states and the District of Columbia) to previous years data and we offer tentative estimates based on the assumptions below.

Our principal interest is employment access by working from home, largely because of the considerable evidence of large increases during the pandemic. These data will not match the ACS 2019 data, because only five modes are included in the experimental data (drive alone, car pool, transit, taxicabs and work from home). The ACS experimental data excludes modes such as walking, bicycles and motorcycles while this analysis does not include taxicabs.

Assumptions

In that spirit, we cautiously offer a “what if” analysis with clearly stated assumptions to provide “guesstimates” of the widely reported expansion of working at home (the largest share of remote work) during the pandemic. The tentative assumptions are that:

In the first two months of 2020, work access modes is assumed to have had had the distribution of usual work trip access methods as was reported for the entire year of 2019. Generally, the changes in employment access that have been associated with the pandemic lockdowns in early March 2020 or later.
Employment access shares for ten months (March through December) were assumed to be equal to the annual ACS 2020 experimental estimates minus the estimates from Assumption #1, above.

Working From Home

Tentative employment access estimates are derived based upon these assumptions, shown in Figure 1. Driving alone is estimated to have dropped 12%, car pools 14% and transit 43%. Working from home would have increased more than 210% (Figures 1 and 2).

If the assumptions above were to hold, the work at home access figure for the pandemic period (March to December) would be 18.7% compared to 6.0% for the first two months (the 2019 rate).

The same assumptions can be used to estimate the work from home share for the states and the District of Columbia. This data is illustrated in Figure 3, with the actual estimates shown in Table 1, below.

The District of Columbia would have had by far the highest work from home share, at 46.7%, almost 75% above second place Massachusetts (26.7%). The District of Columbia (Washington) results are not surprising, reflecting the huge physical commuting losses that occurred in the nation’s largest central business districts (CBDs), since their office jobs are so easily replaced by remote working. At the state/DC level, the District is by far the smallest jurisdiction and with one of the largest CBDs in the nation, a larger work at home share is not unexpected.

Nearby Maryland (estimated third at 25.1%) and Virginia (estimated seventh at 23.1%) also show high work from home shares, as many formerly Washington bound auto and transit riders worked from home instead.

The state of Washington is estimated to have ranked fourth, at 25.0% and is home to the nation’s seventh largest CBD (Seattle). Metro Seattle is one of the nation’s premier tech centers, in which many jobs can readily be done from home. Colorado is estimated to have ranked fifth, while New Jersey was sixth. Before the pandemic, New Jersey supplied many commuters to New York’s Manhattan, by far the nation’s largest CBD as well as to Center City Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth largest CBD.

The largest work from home increases from pre-pandemic to pandemic levels also occurred in the District of Columbia and Maryland. New Jersey had the third largest increase, and Maryland the fourth largest (shown in Table 1).

The Future?

The ACS data are based upon usual mode of employment access. There are indications that once the pandemic passes, many more workers will have hybrid schedules that could have them still usually at the physical work location, but working more often from home. Jose Maria Barrero (Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico) Nicholas Bloom (Stanford University) and Steven J. Davis (University of Chicago) have reported survey data to the effect that 20% of full workdays will be from home after the pandemic. This includes the “usual” work from home access and the more hybrid arrangements that would entail fewer work at home days. Further, the National Association of Realtors notes falling office demand in major downtown areas, Further challenges to the largest and densest office markets from working at home could come from the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 and working from satellite offices.

With the pandemic effects still with us, it could take some time to obtain the reliable ACS estimates down to the lowest geographies normally reported.

Table 1 (back to reference)

Share of Employment Access
TENTATIVE ESTIMATES: WORK AT HOME EMPLOYMENT ACCESS: 2020
Four Modes Only (Drive Alone, Car Pool, Transit & Work from Home)
	2020: Jan-Feb	2020: Mar-Dec	Rank	Change	Rank
Alabama	3.5%	9.8%	48	182%	28
Alaska	5.0%	14.8%	33	198%	18
Arizona	7.9%	20.9%	15	164%	33
Arkansas	3.6%	9.0%	50	149%	39
California	6.7%	22.6%	8	238%	13
Colorado	9.6%	24.5%	5	155%	36
Connecticut	5.8%	21.7%	13	274%	7
Delaware	5.3%	20.0%	16	274%	8
District of Columbia	9.2%	46.6%	1	407%	1
Florida	7.3%	16.6%	25	128%	45
Georgia	7.2%	18.2%	21	153%	37
Hawaii	5.1%	13.0%	41	152%	38
Idaho	7.7%	16.4%	26	112%	48
Illinois	5.7%	19.9%	17	249%	11
Indiana	4.5%	13.2%	39	196%	21
Iowa	6.0%	13.8%	35	129%	44
Kansas	5.3%	15.0%	32	183%	27
Kentucky	4.5%	13.3%	38	198%	19
Louisiana	4.1%	9.2%	49	125%	47
Maine	6.6%	18.8%	19	183%	26
Maryland	5.7%	25.1%	3	337%	4
Massachusetts	5.9%	26.7%	2	356%	2
Michigan	4.7%	16.7%	24	257%	10
Minnesota	6.7%	22.6%	9	235%	14
Mississippi	3.2%	6.1%	51	92%	49
Missouri	5.2%	15.2%	30	191%	23
Montana	7.0%	16.1%	27	131%	43
Nebraska	4.8%	13.1%	40	171%	31
Nevada	5.1%	13.8%	36	170%	32
New Hampshire	7.6%	18.6%	20	144%	40
New Jersey	5.2%	23.2%	6	350%	3
New Mexico	5.3%	15.0%	31	184%	25
New York	5.2%	22.3%	10	325%	5
North Carolina	6.9%	17.9%	22	158%	35
North Dakota	3.8%	11.1%	44	193%	22
Ohio	4.8%	15.6%	29	228%	15
Oklahoma	4.6%	10.7%	46	135%	42
Oregon	7.8%	22.1%	11	182%	29
Pennsylvania	5.7%	19.7%	18	245%	12
Rhode Island	4.7%	14.4%	34	205%	16
South Carolina	5.3%	12.0%	42	127%	46
South Dakota	6.4%	11.6%	43	81%	50
Tennessee	5.8%	13.7%	37	136%	41
Texas	5.9%	17.5%	23	196%	20
Utah	7.7%	21.3%	14	176%	30
Vermont	7.5%	21.8%	12	189%	24
Virginia	6.0%	23.1%	7	283%	6
Washington	6.9%	25.0%	4	263%	9
West Virginia	4.1%	10.7%	45	162%	34
Wisconsin	5.3%	15.9%	28	199%	17
Wyoming	6.0%	10.1%	47	67%	51
UNITED STATES	6.0%	18.7%		212%
Estimated from ACS 2019 and ACS 2020 Experimental Data (see text for assumptions)

Used by permission from Inrix.com

Feudal Future Podcast: The Purpose Behind the Podcast

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Wed, 27 Oct 2021 14:04:18 -0400

This special in-person episode welcomes our audience to Season 2 of our show. Joel and Marshall share the purpose behind the podcast as well as memorable moments and learning lessons along the way.

Listen on Apple Podcast
Listen on Google Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
More podcast episodes & show notes at JoelKotkin.com

Watch Episode Video

Join the Beyond Feudalism Facebook group.
Learn about Joel's book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism.

About the hosts:

Joel Kotkin is the Roger Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University, Executive Director of the Urban Reform Institute, and an internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends. His most recent book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism is now available for order.

Marshall Toplansky is a widely published and award-winning marketing professional and successful entrepreneur. He co-founded KPMG’s data & analytics center of excellence and now teaches and consults corporations on their analytics strategies.

This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.