‘Game changer.’ How COVID-19 will change our commutes around the Sacramento region

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For a decade, Erika Plank drove solo 45 minutes from Roseville to her job at VSP Global in Rancho Cordova. Sometimes it took much longer when traffic snarled.

Now, amid the coronavirus pandemic, she works at home. The new arrangement offers her more time to prep her children in the morning and to cook dinner in the evening. “My commute is from the kitchen to my (home) office,” she said. “It’s been wonderful.”

But Plank misses the personal contact at the office. She even misses, at least a bit, the drive home when she’d decompress and listen to the radio.

So what happens to the famous California commuter lifestyle when a vaccine arrives? Have we been weaned off it? Or are we all going to find ourselves back in our cars on clogged freeways, headed back to our offices?

University of California, Davis travel behavior researcher Giovanni Circella is intrigued. A significant moment is approaching, he said, that will impact our transportation networks, land use decisions and air quality.

“This disruption is so massive it might really be a game changer,” said Circella, director the university’s future mobility program.

The early bet is that many employers will allow office workers to switch to a hybrid approach, staying at home a few days a week and heading into the office other days, Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce head Amanda Blackwood said.

That means thousands of cars will be off the road each day. Will that allow governments to stop pouring as much money into freeways and roadwork? And will the capital region’s air quality finally meet federal clean air standards?

Or could the opposite happen? Will a new work-from-home world, fueled in part by Bay Area emigrees, cause more people to move to the suburbs, farther from workplaces, adding to sprawl and pollution as more people drive more just to get to everyday chores?

Driving cut by half when COVID hit

So far, the seven-month coronavirus-era telework experiment has shown interesting new driving patterns.

In Sacramento, drivers initially reduced their miles traveled by 50%, unclogging local freeways so dramatically that the California Highway Patrol publicly warned about fast drivers, saying officers suddenly were giving out more speeding tickets.

Not surprisingly, the reduced traffic in March and April led to a big drop in air pollution.

“People saw the blue sky they hadn’t seen a long time,” said Alberto Ayala, head of the Sacramento Metropolitan Air Quality Management District.

Then traffic began to increase. By July, daily driving miles were approaching pre-COVID levels, even though most teleworkers were still working from home.

Some of that increase involved construction, hospital, restaurant and retail workers heading back to jobs as local governments eased COVID restrictions. A Caltrans analysis, in fact, indicates that only about 30% of the working population has the kind of job that allows telecommuting.

But analysts say office workers who now telework at home appear to be making more car trips during the day for chores, which is creating more congestion on local streets, even while rush-hour freeway traffic remains lighter than it was pre-COVID.

And it appears people may be making more pleasure trips. Sacramento region residents took 37% more long-distance trips (100 miles or more) during COVID than during the same period last year, according to seoClarity, a company that analyzes data gathered from online search engines.

It’s almost as if society is programmed to get a certain amount of driving done, whether it’s to work or not.

“People have a trip budget,” suggested Ellen Greenberg, Caltrans’ deputy director of sustainability. “If I’m not spending that hour a day on a commute, I might put the dog in the car and go to a park or beach for a walk.”

Making teleworking succeed

Still, Greenberg, Ayala and other transportation analysts say they believe teleworking will reduce congestion and pollution long term.

“All these side trips do not add up to the heavy fossil fuel use in these heavy commutes,” Ayala said.

Seeing an opportunity, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments, which serves as a regional planning coordinator, began last month working with companies on creating telework policies that are sustainable for them and their employees, and keep more cars long-term off the road.

SACOG head James Corless pitches it as a way for companies to compete for potential employees. “Workers will be asking in job interviews, ‘What is your telework policy?’” he said.

At VSP Global, an eye care company, almost all of its 2,000 Rancho Cordova campus employees are now working from home. The company hopes to keep some form of telework going post-COVID, human resources officer Kristi Cappelletti-Matthews said, in good part because employees are reporting better work-life balance and are proving to be “extremely productive” working from home.

The biggest fish locally among employers is the state government. It sent many of its downtown office workers home in March and now is contemplating how many of them should stay there permanently, or working a hybrid home/office schedule. Officials declined to offer details, but appear ready for a significant policy change.

“We are interested in taking what we’ve learned about telework so far and looking at how to capitalize on it in places where it’s working well for us,” said Amy Palmer, Deputy Secretary of Communications at California Government Operations Agency. “We continue to be committed to meeting the needs of those serving the people of California at this time while working to make state work more attractive, accessible, efficient and engaging in the years ahead.”

Ayala, the region’s air management executive, said the onus is on local leaders to push policies that encourage teleworking and promote alternatives to cars. That includes helping transit agencies get back on their feet.

“Before COVID, we were anticipating carshare, bikes, scooters, optimized RT routes, and electric shuttles across the causeway to Davis, all geared to a future that is not so reliant on single occupant vehicle use,” Ayala said. “Now we have to hit reset.”

Some transportation planners say COVID could cause more driving short-term because people are worried about catching viruses on transit. Transit ridership has plummeted to the point that some bus and rail transit agencies may fail.

“There is limited ability by government to support transit funding,” said travel behavior researcher Circella, who heads the UC Davis 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program. “It could lead to reduced services. That might make the service less appealing to users. It could spiral down.”

More growth, more congestion

For now, road construction and repair continues, but that is largely thanks to federal emergency bailout funds.

“The ... issue is whether the gas tax and the sales tax would bring in less revenue since people aren’t driving as much,” Sacramento County transportation planning head Ron Vicari said in an email. “Less revenue won’t shut down the current projects underway, but may cause the delay of future projects.”

As the region inevitably grows, it could find itself struggling to keep freeways unclogged and in good repair.

It appears some of that growth is happening now, prompted by COVID. There is anecdotal evidence that young Bay Area residents are moving to the Sacramento suburbs because they can telework here and pay cheaper rents or lower mortgages.

That will intensify the pressure to expand roads, said Mike Luken, head of transportation planning in Placer County. Placer, in particular, hopes to enlarge the Highway 65 interchange at Interstate 80. Traffic there lightened noticeably in the spring, but it has since become crowded again.

”Our housing starts in the region are going through the roof,” Luken said. “We still need everything (road projects). We are behind on 65/80.”

In Sacramento, officials are pushing to get more people to live in the urban core so that, regardless of whether they work at home or in a downtown office, they won’t contribute to the crunch of car commuters.

On a personal level, VSP manager and former car commuter Erika Plank says the experience of working from home has been enlightening. For the first time, she said, she and her husband are thinking about their own “carbon footprint,” and feel good about playing a role in reducing congestion and in cleaning the air.

But it doesn’t mean she is all in on full-time telecommuting.

In fact, she is among many commuters who now use a word that seemed impossible pre-COVID: Flexibility. When the virus has been tamed, she hopes to work a hybrid schedule, some days at home, some at the office.

“Flexibility will be key for me personally,” she said. “I’ve found great value to working at home, but I really value working at the office.”

Sacramento Bee reporter Phillip Reese contributed to this report.

This story was originally published October 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.