7 Comments

This is a persuasive article for supporting hybrid work. In my opinion, Sustain Charlotte would welcome gridlock on our roads and an inability to park where you live, if that would accomplish their goals. For the foreseeable future Charlotte is a car centric city. We do not have a viable regional transportation plan like in NYC and Philadelphia and spending $13 billion on light rail to surrounding counties in North and South Carolina without the financial participation of those entities is not feasible. It's time to revisit our transportation proposals.

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Doyle, Sustain Charlotte supports hybrid work. We would not welcome gridlock; we work every day to reduce it. However, given the projected population growth, without more efficient ways for people to move around, gridlock is guaranteed. That’s why we advocate for transportation choices. - Shannon Binns

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Are there studies to support the belief that there is less collaboration when employees work from home? Before I retired, I spent 100% of my time in meetings, usually conference calls, usually on mute working on deliverables, which is what my compensation was based on. If I needed to ask a co-worker a question while on a conference call, I used the corporate messaging system. Is that collaboration? If so, I think employees already have remote collaboration figured out. Bring on full time WFH and let Charlotte spend the money it saves on transit and road maintenance on parks, affordable housing and toilets for the unhoused uptown.

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Ii think an aspect missing from the discussion is the effect of WFH on the long term health of the organization. There are numerous studies (and common sense) that indicate that institutional knowledge is not effectively shared or passed down to younger workers.

I am sure all the posters here and the speakers at the hearing are effective, self motivated and ethical employees. Perhaps that is not universal behavior, especially in larger organizations.

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Our city bureaucrats want to tax us to spend $13 billion dollars on transit now used by 2.1% of people living in greater Charlotte. Wow. So far common sense has stalled ideology; I hope that continues.

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Callie - the reason most people in our area drive is because we have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in roads designed for driving. We have not done the same for transit. People who have the ability and means to drive are doing so because taxpayers have made it the most convenient and often only way to get to where they need to go. It isn’t an accident. If we had invested in transit the way we’ve invested in driving, the numbers would be very different.

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The "Number of Days by Air Quality Index Color" graph shows an immaterial difference in Air Quality Days between 2013 and 2022. It implies "Work from Home" during Covid had no impact on Mecklenburg County air quality and thus the statement "...they found work-from-home employees accounted for 54% fewer greenhouse gas emissions than people who worked in the office..." is not supported (locally). The National Academy of Sciences paper seemed to use assessments from other sources and did not cite methodologies and study sources. They generated a lot of pretty graphs but all the minutia and detail seemed to be trumped by hard, consistently measured and compiled data generated by Mecklenburg County.

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