I agree, but there are plenty of jobs that cannot be done in home office. During covid years I commuted like crazy (by train though) because I worked in a lab developing antiretrovirals. Even the project managers in biotech/pharma need to be on site especially in intense times (like covid) to be able to be in the lab. There are tons of jobs (isn’t it 50%?) that cannot be done from home office. We need a strong public transport either way.
As a side note: The stupidest form of work is hybrid. So you still have to live relatively close to work to be able to commute, i.e. likely in an expensive metropolitan area, and pay higher rent prices because you need a working room, and the room is not fully tax deductible because you theoretically could be in the office (at least in Germany they deduct 6€/day for voluntary home office). It’s a shame we don’t have much more and much cheaper coworking spaces. They should be literally everywhere so you don’t need to go further than 15 minutes.
Working from home is the solution to all infrastructure problems and I’m sick of pretending it isn’t.
Fuck your cars, buses, trains, the lot. Housing too expensive where you work? Live in a small cheap town. Roads too busy? Don’t use them.
Are we all supposed to pretend the covid years didn’t exist now?
Even if we assume everyone can work from home, people still need to go places for other reasons.
Yeah, but not all at the same time.
Where the roads are busiest is 8-9am and 5-6pm. That ain’t shoppers or people going to the park.
So we can build things to a somewhat lower capacity sure. That helps, but what exactly does it solve?
I agree, but there are plenty of jobs that cannot be done in home office. During covid years I commuted like crazy (by train though) because I worked in a lab developing antiretrovirals. Even the project managers in biotech/pharma need to be on site especially in intense times (like covid) to be able to be in the lab. There are tons of jobs (isn’t it 50%?) that cannot be done from home office. We need a strong public transport either way.
As a side note: The stupidest form of work is hybrid. So you still have to live relatively close to work to be able to commute, i.e. likely in an expensive metropolitan area, and pay higher rent prices because you need a working room, and the room is not fully tax deductible because you theoretically could be in the office (at least in Germany they deduct 6€/day for voluntary home office). It’s a shame we don’t have much more and much cheaper coworking spaces. They should be literally everywhere so you don’t need to go further than 15 minutes.