Remote work dropped 8 percent nationally in 2024, a move that turned out to be even more pronounced in major tech centers like Silicon Valley in California.
“I couldn’t believe the reduction in working from home in these tech cities. That shocked me,” said Bob Pishue, a senior economist and transportation analyst at INRIX, and one of the authors of the INRIX 2024 Global Traffic Scorecard, which tracks traffic congestion across the top 25 U.S. metros and in cities around the world.
Working from home in San Jose declined 33 percent in 2024, with similar downward trends in San Francisco and Seattle, which showed 24 percent and 29 percent respective drops in work-from-anywhere postures, as major employers like Amazon began to call employees back to the office.
“I think working from home is going to continue to trend down. And so how are those trips going to be added to the network is, I think, a big challenge,” Pishue said, addressing the ongoing challenge of traffic congestion in nearly every major metropolitan area. New York City remains the most congested metro in the nation, followed by Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.
Some cities, Like Denver and Nashville, Tenn., experienced significant traffic growth, owing to other trends like in-migration. Traffic congestion in Denver increased 18 percent last year according to the INRIX research; in Nashville it increased 13 percent. More than half of urban areas in the U.S. experienced an increase in traffic delays in 2024, compared to 2023, while 28 percent experienced reduced traffic congestion and 17 percent saw no significant change.
These other factors driving traffic congestion are a reminder of the many influences that can affect congestion — and remote work is still a popular choice. Work-from-home still sits at 163 percent above pre-COVID-19 levels, Pishue said, pointing out even before the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work was already on the rise.
An increase in office commutes could be welcome news for transit agencies, which saw precipitous declines in ridership due to the pandemic. Transit ridership boardings nationwide grew 6 percent in 2024 according to INRIX but remain 24 percent below pre-COVID-19 levels. In San Jose, where workers are heading back to the office in high numbers, transit ridership grew 42 percent in 2024.
“So it definitely has an effect,” Pishue said.
In Nashville, a historically car-focused city, bus ridership is back to pre-COVID-19 levels, transit officials said. However, ridership on the region’s commuter rail line remains depressed, with only about half the boardings of 2019 according to statistics from WeGo Public Transit, which serves the Nashville region.
“Much of this has been attributed to work-at-home changes in the wake of the pandemic,” Eric Melcher, public information officer for WeGo, said via email, pointing to the lagging rail ridership. Bus ridership, meanwhile, is now at 101 percent of pre-pandemic levels, owing partially to redesigned service levels to expand frequency and hours of operation on some of the most popular routes. Ridership on its most used route is up roughly 128 percent over pre-pandemic levels, he said, indicating much of that appears to be due to people going to work.
An ability to quickly and easily alter transportation policy and infrastructure has always been lacking, Pishue said, and may be a continued impediment to adjusting when transportation patterns change due to forces like migration or rapid population shifts.
“I want to see how we can inject some flexibility into our planning. And I know it’s tough. Because funding doesn’t come with flexibility that often,” he said. “But trying to build up our transportation system to accommodate some of these shifts is, I think, what we need to do in order to keep the transportation network moving.”
TomTom, another transportation tech firm that recently released its 2024 Traffic Index, saw similar patterns around shifts in remote work. Its most congested U.S. cities were New York City, San Francisco, Honolulu, Chicago and Philadelphia.
Other than an increase in commuter car traffic, other movements have also put more vehicles on roadways, TomTom officials said.
“Other contributing factors include urban expansion that often outpaces infrastructure development, or the boom in e-commerce, which has increased the number of delivery vehicles on the road,” Ralf-Peter Schäfer, TomTom vice president, product management of traffic, travel and routing, said via email. On top of this, many U.S. cities lack adequate public transit, he added, further pushing travelers to personal vehicles.
All eyes seem to be on New York City’s new congestion-pricing project, a first in the nation. It’s still too soon to say if the move to charge vehicles $9 to enter Manhattan below 60th Street will significantly reduce traffic while raising much needed funding for the region’s transit systems.
But congestion pricing, demand-based transit fares, intelligent traffic management systems and improved urban planning are, he said, the kinds of tech and policy solutions transportation leaders should consider as congestion’s costs to the economy and climate mount.
“As urban populations grow,” Schäfer said, “cities must rethink mobility strategies to ensure efficient, sustainable and accessible transportation for all.”
