L.A. traffic behavior is changing. Is post-pandemic gridlock inevitable?
This is followed by a few unconvincing attempts to make a big deal out of some tiny changes, but the answer is pretty clear already:
The state had barely even opened up in June and already traffic was practically the same as it had been in 2019. In another month you won't be able to tell the difference.
And while we're on the topic, can we please, once and for all, give up on the "COVID has changed life forever" genre? It hasn't. It's already obvious that things will return almost completely to normal over the next few months and that the experience of living through a pandemic has neither enriched our lives nor taught us to cherish our friends and neighbors even more. All it's done is make us cranky.
The response to the pandemic is a clear sign that we are not ready for the problems that climate change will be throwing at us, among which will be more pandemics.
If there's anything that the pandemic taught me, it's that Americans cannot sacrifice for each other. I've lost a lot of faith in people over the past year. We got saved in the end by a medical/scientific breakthrough, not because of every day people who instead decided that fighting culture wars over simple masks was more important. I don't trust that we can overcome a bigger problem like climate change. Hopefully there are scientific breakthroughs that overcome us like Kevin says though but that's a lot of "what ifs" to bank my beliefs on.
The majority of Americans sacrificed massively for the pandemic. Don't only focus on the negative.
Not enough did and that's what worries me. It's why we had such a terrible infection and death curve all of last year. You expect me to trust people out there after the past year we had? Sorry but much of that trust is gone. Especially on top of all the political and social justice fights we've had going on for years that were exacerbated. I'm not going to sacrifice for people if they won't sacrifice for me.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that causes problems. That said, I know the feeling, and fighting the urge to give up on the human race because half of them behave like idiots at any one time seems to take all my energy these days.
The US rates were not particularly out of whack with those of our peer nations. We were about in the middle of the pack.
Thousands of first responders and essential workers, teachers and others who put themselves at risk so that we could stay safe and/or have some semblance of normalcy really did show us the best of humanity and the best of America. I agree, though, that it also became painfully clear that far too many of us are ungrateful, immature twits for whom freedom and citizenship mean little more than "IGMFY" and "You're not the boss of me!" I also agree that this does not bode well for our ability to face future challenges that require collective action.
Really depends on where you live. Here in Northern Virginia most people were very responsible about masks and public health measures. Made me glad I live here and not some of the other places.
In fact, I have pretty much resolved not to travel any more to states that continue to elect Republican pieces of garbage. If they want to live that way, fine - but I don't want any part of it.
to true....
A party dominated by anti-science and anti-logic means even basic precautions will be fought over.
But Kevin, what about the clicks??? Haha, in all honesty I think you do have a point. Some things will change but COVID overall seemed to have accelerated some underlying trends. A lot of gains perceived to be from COVID seem to flow to upper middle class white collar professionals though. In other words, people who needed the least amount of help. I expect effects from the pandemic to be very K-shaped but news writers will instead focus on edge case stories of people "finding themselves" while being isolated. I suspect there is some "survivorship bias" in these stories though. It's always easier to find someone willing to talk about a positive experience than those who suffered from depression during COVID.
Re: "It's always easier to find someone willing to talk about a positive experience than those who suffered from depression during COVID."
Not my experience as a sufferer of back pain and the resulting surgery. While waiting for the surgery I investigated various patient comments about the results of their surgery. Almost all comments were negative. None to few positive. Maybe COVID is different.
But that's physical pain. Mental health has much more of a stigma. I know I'm not willing to open up about depressive episodes to a stranger compared to complaining about back pains.
Yeah, but 9/11 changed everything first.
Apparently, if we want real change, select a Republican as president.
Bush-43 --> 9/11
Trump --> The Rona
Haw-Haw Hawley --> ?
1. Will malls come back? People will want to get out of the house, but online shopping is the winner.
2. Groceries? Again, more online shopping--but I'd guess amount of online shopping for groceries will fall off.
3. Work from home? Increase in flex-time, but offices will be back.
4. Snow Days....bummer
5. Automation? Yes, but not all the experiments will work out.
6. Essential workers? If minimum wage laws across the country don't go up, their pay will go back down...
2. Groceries? Two weeks after my second shot, I was back to shopping for my own groceries. Instacart shoppers buy what you tell them to. It doesn't matter the condition of the produce. If I find that the produce I intended to buy is past its prime, I select an alternate. No such luck with Instacart. I don't have to wonder if the frozen stuff will still be frozen, either.
We used to never order groceries now we almost always have them delivered and only occasionally shop.
There, 1 to 1 anecdote.
I never once did online grocery shopping. I did buy some clothes on line when many of the stores were closed (and I've long bought clothing online when I can't find something I want/like in real stores). With food I very much want to see it and perhaps feel it when buy it.
I never noticed a big drop off in in-person grocery shopping over the last year. I’m sure online grocery orders increased but not to the extent it was noticeable in the stores.
I've been ordering via Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods. I have not stopped ordering since getting vaccinated but I'm only ordering when I need a bunch of items and going to the store when I needs some odds and ends that I'd rather get in person.
Ordering is good for some things and not so much for others. Mostly I've had good luck with ordering fruit and veggies from Whole Foods mostly but not all the time for Amazon Fresh. But one issue I have is order minimums, I have a freezer full of chicken breasts at the moment because my order ended up being a lot more than I thought it would be. Also order substitutions can be crazy.
People buying their own stuff, or Instacart shoppers buying for others?
I think malls as major retail outlets are over -- they're going to be mostly repurposed as dining and entertainment hubs. I can't remember the last time I bought clothes in a store and don't miss it one bit. While I can see myself occasionally taking advantage of grocery pickup or delivery (assuming supermarkets continue to offer it), I really do value being able to pick out my own stuff.
Malls have been dying for a while now. This is not a new trend.
They will be torn down and will be sites of large apartment projects.
“It's already obvious that things will return almost completely to normal over the next few months”
Not in my neck of the woods by a long shot. We had a lot of restaurants go out of business.
And the housing shortage is unprecedented.
And while we're on the topic, can we please, once and for all, give up on the "COVID has changed life forever" genre? It hasn't.
Agreed, mostly. I see the biggest, longer term changes being: A) improvements in vaccine development* and B) some marginal restructuring of restaurant sector (more takeout meals, more labor-saving-friendly business models, etc).
From what I can see, work-from-home had already begun increasing fairly noticeably 5-8 years ago. That's likely to continue, and possibly increase a bit, but the office isn't going to vanish. Agglomeration effects have been driving human progress (and urbanization) for thousands of years, so, we must be hard-wired to gather in groups.
*One would certainly hope society in general would be better prepared all around for the next pandemic, but even that isn't so certain, at least in the US.
It changed or exacerbated a lot of things.
Housing: locked in yet more gentrifying and growth in size of housing units in the US, and with underconstruction of smaller/cheaper units continuing...
Work has changed. The jobs that can be remote/telework are going to stay that way on at least a half time basis. Things might "bounce back" a little bit, but it'll probably be an overcorrection.
MRNA vaccines are here now. This is going to be a gamechanger. And not just for regular diseases, but possibly genetic ones as well.
Some societal norms will have changed regarding public health as well. Maybe not a lot, but we'll be a little bit more like East Asian countries that have had habitual mask wearing than we were before.
I live next to the freeway cited in that graph and, indeed, traffic is back to being a mess - a mess which is substantially due to California's population doubling over a period of 50 years, upsetting any civic planning. I think the situation stinks, but there must be many people out there who are fine with the city of Los Angeles' density now half that of Hong Kong.
By the way, 50 years ago there was concern about both this nation's population growth, as well as the world's, but that has dissipated. Dissipated so much that population growth (or lack thereof) is not part of the global warming discussion. Even though we could reduce *projected* CO2 emissions by 1/3 if we kept the world's population static, beginning now.
Most of the developed countries experienced severe population crash that has not yet rebounded. This is important since 1 person in a first world country puts out way more greenhouse gasses than a group of developing country people.
Somewhat disagree. It is much more socially acceptable to just opt out social situations if you need a break for example. These are subtle changes but they are there.
Some offices will modify their leases once they're due, opting to go for smaller, flexible spaces. In many offices, people who gotten vaccinated will be allowed to return to in-office work, while non-vaccinated will not. When that Delta wave hits, you'll see offices emphasize this dichotomy while others will be forced to go back to working from home. Over time, the series of waves will further push more offices to change how they work, requiring less in-office work. Training of new employees will of course remain difficult as a result of less in-person work, and that will drive more companies to pay closer attention to turnover and incentivizing longer relationships.
I agree with you D_Ohrk - my agency is getting rid of leased space and consolidating to our main HQ building which is not large enough to hold all employees and on-site contractors at once. So folks whose jobs can be done via telework apparently will be required to telework at lease a few days a week and some of us have been told our jobs are likely to be classified as full time telework but not full time remote telework, we must still remain local to be able to come into the office on an as needed basis.
Traffic patterns in the DC area have changed. Traffic is back alas but different than before. There's no morning/evening rush hour but steady traffic throughout the entire day as folks working from home sneak out for errands like dropping kids off at school, going to appointments or running to the grocery store on your lunch break.
“In many offices, people who gotten vaccinated will be allowed to return to in-office work, while non-vaccinated will not.”
I don’t think this will actually happen, because (1) half of America now thinks freedom = ability to ignore effects of your own actions on others (and thus any attempt to bar the unvaccinated from anywhere will prompt massive outrage especially in red states) but more importantly (2) employers don’t care about anything affecting their employees unless they can be sued over it (and it’s really hard to definitively prove in a courtroom that you caught covid at your workplace as opposed to all the other places people go without masks now).
But in a just world, the unvaccinated without proof of a medical reason behind their status would be shunned by everyone else, including being fired from their employers to keep everyone else safe.
Employers will not want to lose people, and productivity, to illness (even temporarily). Why do you think so many switched to Work from Home even before the lockdowns started?
McKinsey estimates that a quarter of workers may work from home, going forward. A friend at HBO said that while they’d been planning to move most of their operations to LA they won’t know, knowing they can run the company from anywhere. (This independent of the Discovery deal.) e-commerce grew at three times the previous rate this past year. Nobody knows yet how many of the people who fled the big cities will move back, nor how many back office workers will, once the big companies work out how many of them need not come back to work in expensive real estate, will move from Queens, or San Jose, to Texas or Kansas or somewhere with cheaper real estate. You should wait a bit, Kevin. Things are a long way from sorting out.
Many highly educated workers aren’t going to want to live in Kansas, because they find the politics there are a dealbreaker for them (less respect for racial/ethnic/religious/gender/sexual minorities, women who want to not be shamed when visiting planned parenthood, etc.) and/or because Kansas lacks the amenities (high speed internet, nonstop international flight networks, cultural/educational institutions, etc.) they’re used to enjoying in their current larger urban area. There were plenty of reasons why Kansas wasn’t attracting lots of educated workers pre-covid that didn’t go away during covid.
I wouldn't trust McKinsey to tell me if the sun was out.
Intersting definition of practically the same. Especially for the afternoon/evening…
I think *some* things are going to change permanently as a result of COVID-19. But, with the exception of MRNA vaccine technology (obviously here to stay), nobody knows yet *which* things.
But there are a lot of people writing thumbsuckers who have pages to fill, and you can't fill much with a shrug emoji.
Good to see everything normal again--SNAFU!
People are temporarily more picky about jobs because they got money from the government in various ways and some housing payments have been suspended, and businesses are trying to hire fast. But unless Joe Manchin and some other Democrats have major epiphanies the government spending will come to an end and the effects will be gone within a couple of years (probably before the 2022 election). Nothing has happened to permanently improve the employer/worker balance in major ways.
A possible effect of the pandemic which has not been discussed is that businesses will rely even more on out-of-office contract work. That way in the next pandemic they can easily drop workers and pick them up again (no, you won't be able to hold out for long contracts). Working out-of-office will probably mean more expenses borne by workers.
A lot of people seem to be infected with over-optimism, maybe just because Trump is (temporarily) gone. Remember that economic predictions are very unreliable, especially about the future (actually economists and economic writers often get the facts about the past wrong).
Outside of seasonal work, most skilled work employers don't want to drop and pickup workers like that. It takes time to train new people-- in some jobs, months. This is why "labor hoarding" exists.
“Ideally, you'd have every plant you own on a barge.” - Jack Welch, while CEO of GE, expounding on global labor arbitrage.
Well! Considering all that we remembered and learned from the great Spanish Flu pandemic, I just don't know how you can possible go out so far on a limb as to say that! I mean, if only they'd written stuff down or carved it in stone so we would have had their wisdom! Thank the gods we got YouTube now so that mistake will not be repeated!
KD has been in a get off my lawn rant lately, much of it unnecessary.
Speaking of things changed/unchanged, what has become of Velociryx?
Mask wearing aggravates social anxiety disorder in two ways, for those who feel massively self-conscious about themselves who may hide behind the mask and for those who have low capacity to easily pick up social cues and who are freaked out by the mask's presence,
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-06/uow-rsm061821.php
One thing has changed permanently on the highway here: Maryland replaced its manual toll booths with a toll by plate system ending the horrible rush hour backup on I-95 from the Harbor tunnel all the way out to the Beltway (or beyond on really bad days). I had occasion to go that way recently and while there was a lot of traffic and it was a little slow, there was none of the bumper to bumper gridlock that made the route a nightmare anytime after 3 and before 7.
I'm kinda shocked they didn't do this 20 years ago. It's been a bottleneck like forever, I remember getting stuck in traffic there on family car trips to visit Grandma in the 1980s. Oh wow it's been a while since been through the tunnel, most of my family in NJ has either passed away or moved away.
We're not done with this. I'm not done with it either. Right now the pendulum is still swinging (just like the wildly swinging costs of various goods)
Some things -
* We learned a lot of professional-type work doesn't need much office or personal attention. A whole lot of travel and commuting is clearly a huge waste of time and money. In fact a whole lot of work is just plain bull**** and probably doesn't need to be done by anyone!
* We learned that the school industrial complex is partly - mostly?- a baby sitting service for workers, especially people who can't work from home, especially mothers who have to work. I don't know what to do with that information, but we are plainly messed up in multiple ways. It's not good education, it's not a good use of people, & it's not even good babysitting (inadequate).
* We learned that the very expensive higher education system is some other kind of con (exactly what this is I don't have a word for)
* We learned we are very dependent on large groups of underpaid, under appreciated, and under supported service and health workers we don't give 2 ****s about normally
* We learned that just in time systems and outsourcing manufacturing offshore has gigantic downsides
* We learned we have a large segment of the population that is ignorant and / or brain damaged in some significant and not well understood way
* We learned we have outstanding science and some really good people who can do great things as long as not too many trapdoors and roadblocks are in the way
* We've gotten a great lesson in how inefficient human medicine is & some ideas about how to bring it forward
Probably much more and better lessons.... Some of these are not going to be forgotten in the mad rush to put all the genies back in the 2019 bottles.
. . . and that's why you should vote for the Leopard's Eating My Face Party,
https://i.redd.it/gojd97gv3v671.jpg
. . .Eating Your Face . . .