Will the COVID pandemic mean the end of rush-hour traffic in North Carolina?
If you ventured out on the road in late March or April, you could tell something was different. With state and local governments ordering people to stay home to prevent the spread of coronavirus, streets and highways normally filled with cars and trucks were remarkably free of traffic.
That started to change as restrictions were lifted and businesses began to reopen in late May and early June. But traffic remains below pre-pandemic levels in North Carolina, especially in the Triangle, where large numbers of people continue to work from home.
“I think anybody who is traveling now can see the rush hours are not quite as good as they were in April,” said Kevin Lacy, the state traffic engineer for the N.C. Department of Transportation. “But they’re much better than they were last September.”
NCDOT compiles traffic data in a half dozen cities across the state, using thousands of sensors embedded in the pavement. The numbers show that traffic dropped by as much as half in some places in March and April compared to mid-February, when coronavirus was still considered a distant concern.
Traffic has rebounded, particularly in places such as Concord and Greensboro, where by mid-July traffic volume was down less than 10% compared to February. In Charlotte, traffic was off 18% last week compared to pre-pandemic levels.
But traffic remained down 23% in Raleigh and 27% in Cary last week, declines that are most noticeable at rush hour when people who now work in their kitchens or dens would have been driving to and from the office.
Lacy says North Carolina drivers typically log more than 100 billion miles a year — that’s billion with a “b.” By one estimate, he says, the coronavirus pandemic has reduced travel in the state by 12 billion miles since Jan. 1.
The easing of traffic reflects the changes the COVID-19 pandemic has wrought on the economy and people’s lives. The closing of colleges and universities and local schools this spring took tens of thousands of students, faculty and parents off the road, while furloughed and laid-off workers also contributed to the decline. By the end of May, 129,700 fewer people were working in the Raleigh and Durham/Chapel Hill metro areas than at the beginning of the year, according to the state Department of Commerce.
But Lacy thinks what sets the Triangle apart from other areas when it comes to traffic is that a larger share of commuters here are still working from home, both for government agencies and for companies big and small.
The more than 5,000 workers at the Cary headquarters of software company SAS began telecommuting on March 16, according to spokeswoman Shannon Heath. The offices are now accessible to employees who want to come in, Heath said, but only about 200 a day are choosing to do so.
SAS doesn’t know when it will bring more people back. The company will encourage people to work from home at least through Sept. 7, Heath said.
“As that date approaches, we will determine if it’s feasible to return to offices after Labor Day,” she said.
About 30% of full-time City of Raleigh employees are teleworking at least part-time, up from less than 20% in late March, according to human resources director Fagan Stackhouse. The number rose as the city figured out how to rotate workers in and out on different days of the week.
“A major concern for us has been safety of returning employees and social/physical distancing,” Stackhouse wrote in an email. “Based on this need, each city department was able to plan for rotational telework to allow for adequate spacing in offices, and this translated into greater employee safety and more efficient use of our facilities.”
No company would have voluntarily sent all their employees home to work, says Brooks Raiford, CEO of the N.C. Technology Association, a trade group whose members employ more than 200,000 people statewide. But as they’ve overcome the uncertainties over communication and productivity, many have warmed to the idea, Raiford said.
The association did a series of polls of company executives in which 66% reported that nearly all of their employees were working from home in late June, down from a peak of 81% who said that in mid-April. While some workers are starting to trickle back, Raiford said, many companies are cautious about reopening workplaces while the coronavirus continues to circulate.
“I think companies will be very slow to go full-force back until things have really gotten to a place where safety is assured,” he said.
And even then, Raiford thinks many people will continue to work from home, if only part time. The association’s polling found that the percentage who said working from home would become more common in the future rose from 50% in late March to 77% at the end of June.
Raiford predicts many employees will come to the office when it makes sense to interact with coworkers but will work at home at other times. One result could be fewer people commuting during traditional rush hours.
“I anticipate the traffic suppression to be longer lived, even beyond when there’s a vaccine or a treatment for COVID-19,” he said.
Working at home beyond the pandemic
Some big tech companies have already signaled that they’re comfortable keeping people at home. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has said he expects as much as half of the company’s employees to work from home in the coming decade, and Google announced this week that its workers will remain at home until at least next July.
About 25% of Cisco Systems’ 77,000 employees worldwide were already working from home full-time before the pandemic, said Steve Yager, the top Cisco executive at the company’s campus in Research Triangle Park. All Cisco employees, including about 5,000 at RTP, are still working remotely during the pandemic while the company plans how to bring people back to the office “when the time is right,” Yager said in a written statement.
But workers will have the option to remain home if they want.
“We empower our employees to work in a way that best suits their lifestyle,” Yager wrote. “Any employee who would like to transition to full-time remote after the pandemic will have that opportunity.”
Pam Rivers says it took several weeks to adjust to working at home full-time. Rivers, director of CX Operations for Cisco, was already used to communicating by computer with her team of 35 people, many of whom are scattered around the globe. But she says she misses the unplanned encounters with people in the hallway or the cafeteria at the office.
“There is no substitute for human interaction,” she said.
Rivers thought she would also miss her 30-minute daily commute between Chapel Hill and RTP. She considered it a nice way to start and end the day, listening to the radio and occasionally singing in the car to herself. But she says she’s found better uses for that time and the money she’s saving on gas.
“I really enjoy the quick transition from the kitchen to my office, and I don’t miss driving at all,” Rivers said. “I much prefer to stay home, or take a walk in the neighborhood instead.”
Crashes have declined, too
Fewer cars on the road has meant fewer crashes. The number dropped sharply in March, and in the first week of April there were less than 3,000 collisions statewide, about half the five-year average, according to data compiled by NCDOT from municipalities and the State Highway Patrol.
The number of crashes has risen since then but remains below average.
The number of people killed on the state’s highways, however, hasn’t declined at all. Through mid-July, 770 people had died in traffic crashes, up 2.3% compared to last year, according to the Division of Motor Vehicles. Mark Ezzell, director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Program, says the lack of traffic may actually be a factor.
“Reduced traffic volumes are creating a sense among drivers that it’s OK to engage in unsafe driving behaviors,” Ezzell said.
Lacy, NCDOT’s traffic engineer, says where those crashes are happening may also explain why fatalities remain steady.
Crashes on rural highways dipped this spring but have been about normal since mid-May, according to NCDOT data. By contrast, the number of crashes in the Triangle and Charlotte remains more than 20% below the five-year average.
Rural crashes typically occur at higher speeds and are more deadly than those in urban areas Lacy said. Traffic in those areas, where people aren’t able to telecommute so easily, has increased more than in urban ones, Lacy said.
Lacy agrees that some employers may continue to have people work from home after the coronavirus pandemic has subsided. But he thinks in time people will want to see each other in the flesh again, and the traffic will come back.
“When the thing that forced people to change their behavior goes away, mankind tends to go back to its old ways,” he said. “People are creatures of habit. We like meeting face to face.”
This story was originally published July 30, 2020 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Will the COVID pandemic mean the end of rush-hour traffic in North Carolina?."
