Charlotte's work-from-home surge is altering commutes
Plus: Private toll lanes on I-77 get the go-ahead from a transportation panel in a split vote
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Nearly 30% in Charlotte work from home, ranking us No. 2 nationally; little talk of the trend in transit discussions
by Steve Harrison
WFAE
The Census Bureau recently released its latest American Community Survey, a detailed look at how Americans live.
One of the topics: how Americans get to work, and how many don’t have a commute at all.
In the city of Charlotte, 29.7% of survey respondents reported working from home in 2023.
That’s high. Still, it’s not a surprise, because Charlotte is a white-collar city. There are lots of bankers and lawyers working in their home offices, at least part-time.
But few people know just how high that is.
The ACS compiled data on 234 “places” with more than 65,000 people (including cities and densely-populated unincorporated areas).
Of all those places, only Berkeley, Calif., had a greater share of people working from home than Charlotte, at 31.3%.
Charlotte being almost tops in the nation for “work from home” is more than just a quirky statistic.
It explains why the uptown office market is struggling, with some leaders calling for drastic measures such as tax incentives to demolish unneeded buildings. And it should be a key consideration in how the city plans its transportation future, especially a proposed multibillion-dollar plan that depends on a one-cent sales tax increase.
Sixty percent of that sales tax money is dedicated to transit — which has been crippled in Charlotte in part by a number of technological and societal changes, including working from home.
The cities with the most and least work-from-home
Before we get back to all that, here is some data on work-from-home:
In 2014, 4.9% of American workers worked from home, according to the American Community Survey. That’s now nearly tripled, to 13.8%.
A decade ago, 5.2% of Charlotte workers were homebound. That was just a smidge above the national average. There were more than 60 cities in the country with a greater share of people working from home.
But the city’s share of people working from home has risen by nearly six times, vaulting us to almost the top of the list.
Here are the Census-designated places with the greatest shares of people working from home in 2023:
Berkeley, Calif., 31.3%
Charlotte, 29.7%
Arlington, Va., 28.6%
Seattle, 28.5%
Alameda, Calif., 28.1%
Austin, Texas, 28.1%
Naperville, Ill., 27.9%
Washington, D.C., 27.3%
Dublin, Calif., 27.2%
Denver, 26.1%
And here are the Census-designated places with the smallest shares of people working from home:
New Bedford, Mass., 3.8%
South Gate, Calif., 4%
Trenton, N.J., 4.3%
Brockton, Mass., 4.8%
Fall River, Mass., 4.9%
Corpus Christi, Texas, 4.9%
Compton, Calif., 5.2%
Springfield, Mass., 5.2%
San Juan, Puerto Rico, 5.5%
Elizabeth, N.J., 5.6%
How do we get to work?
The ACS also estimates how Charlotte’s 505,000 workers commuted in 2023.
Drove alone in a car: 286,000
Work from home: 150,000
Carpool: 42,500
Walk: 10,200
Public transportation: 9,272
Bicycle: 1,200
Compare that to the ASC breakdown of how Charlotte’s 410,000 workers commuted in 2014:
Drove alone in a car: 315,000
Carpool: 44,700
Work from home: 21,500
Public transportation: 15,640
Walk: 7,640
Bike: 1,472
Total public transportation share in 2014 was 3.8%. That’s fallen by more than half, and it’s now down to 1.8%.
One thing that’s interesting is that walking had a sizable jump over the last decade, from 7,640 to 10,200. Perhaps that’s the result of more people living uptown and in South End, where they can walk the Rail Trail to the office.
(If you are wondering, the American Community Survey asks workers age 16 and up how they got to work in the previous week from a list of options, including work from home. People who commute with more than one method are asked to select the mode of travel used on most days. So someone working from home might still go into the office one or two days a week.)
Moving forward, it’s unclear whether employers will be able to force their workers back to the office full time, or at least the majority of time.
At the start of 2024, Bank of America issued a stern warning to its employees who weren’t returning to the office. Most of the banks and other white-collar employers are on something like a three-day-a-week requirement now, but compliance is spotty at best (or so we hear through the grapevine).
Last month, Amazon ordered all of its workers to return to the office five days a week. Will that embolden other companies to do the same?
Road congestion returning to pre-Covid peaks
The Texas Transportation Institute found the average Charlotte driver lost 57 hours a year to congestion in 2017. That fell rapidly during the pandemic as we stayed home en masse, dropping to 24 hours lost.
Total traffic delays haven’t reached pre-pandemic levels yet, but are rising rapidly. They were up to 48 hours in 2022. Delays could surpass pre-pandemic levels this decade.
Not a consideration for transportation plan
Charlotte is leading efforts to increase the Mecklenburg sales tax by 1 percentage point, to 8.25%, to fund a $25 billion transportation plan.
City leaders haven’t publicly discussed in-depth the effect of work from home on transit, which is slated to receive 60% of the sales tax money if the plan moves forward (counting buses and rail). They instead focus on the overall population growth in the region, and the need to mitigate future congestion.
In fiscal year 2014, CATS carried 29.5 million passenger trips. By fiscal year 2019, on the eve of the pandemic, ridership had already fallen to 24.3 million. That was possibly due to the proliferation of ride-share companies.
Covid and work-from-home drove ridership even lower.
For fiscal year 2024, CATS carried 15.3 million passengers. The transit system is on pace to carry about 16 million passenger trips in the current fiscal year.
The rate of post-pandemic bounce-back is slowing, suggesting CATS ridership will stabilize at around 16 million to 17 million trips. That would be 68% of pre-pandemic levels and 56% of the peak a decade ago.
The best way to measure the impact of work-from-home is on CATS’ commuter bus fleet, which caters exclusively to uptown workers. Ridership on those express routes is down 75% compared to 2014.
Related articles:
“Charlotte’s big work-from-home boom” (Oct. 9, 2019)
“5 work-from-home tips from a pro” (March 19, 2020)
“The basics of Charlotte’s new transit plan” (Aug. 22, 2024)
Steve Harrison is a reporter with WFAE, Charlotte’s NPR news source. Reach him at sharrison@wfae.com.
Transportation panel approves moving forward with privately run toll lanes on I-77 south of uptown, estimated at $3.7B; Northern towns and Matthews vote ‘no’
by Steve Harrison
WFAE
A regional transportation planning organization Wednesday voted to advance a plan for the North Carolina Department of Transportation to partner with a private company to build express toll lanes on Interstate 77 in south Charlotte.
Under the proposal, a private company would build the toll lanes, which are expected to cost $3.7 billion.
That company, which hasn't been selected, would also set the toll rates and keep the profits.
Brett Canipe with the NCDOT said the state doesn’t have enough money to build new I-77 lanes on its own.
“The scope, scale and cost of the projects in our urban areas have really taken me by surprise,” he said.
The Charlotte Regional Transportation Planning Organization backed the plan, mostly on the strength of the city of Charlotte’s weighted vote, which gives it a near majority.
In addition to Charlotte, Pineville and Mint Hill backed the plan, as did Mooresville and several municipalities in Union County.
But, there was significant opposition to the public-private partnership — mostly because of the controversial privately built and managed toll lanes on I-77 North that opened five years ago.
The majority of governments inside Mecklenburg County voted no. That includes Davidson, Cornelius, Huntersville, Matthews and Mecklenburg County.
Matthews Mayor John Higdon asked whether local officials have asked the legislature to lift a so-called “corridor cap” that limits the amount that can be dedicated to highway corridors at roughly $600 million over five years.
On Monday, the Charlotte City Council unanimously voted to back the public-private partnership.
A day later, Mecklenburg Commissioners voted 5-4 against the plan.
Commissioner Susan Rodriguez-McDowell said on Tuesday that the lanes aren’t fair.
“I believe that managed lanes add to the economic disparities that already exist in our community,” she said. “The wealthy can move through smoothly and everyone can remain in congested lanes. Does it help a little to pull out the folks who can afford the managed lanes? Sure. But is that enough? I don’t think so.”
Commissioner Leigh Altman, who voted in favor of the I-77 South public-private partnership, said it’s the only real option.
“So for those who say, I just want to come up with other solutions — respectfully it’s on you to come forward with what they are. Because what we are hearing from the experts is if we don’t do this, nothing occurs.”
The toll lane decision comes as the city and county are also trying to get approval for a new one-cent sales tax increase to pay for transit and roads. That tax would raise billions of dollars over the next 30 years.
In theory, some of that tax revenue could help build express lanes on I-77 South with the state repaying local leaders with toll revenue. The city of Charlotte hasn't proposed that, however. Sixty percent of the funds would be spent on transit, with the remainder on roads.
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