• Will They Ever Return?

  • General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.
General discussion of passenger rail systems not otherwise covered in the specific forums in this category, including high speed rail.

Moderators: mtuandrew, gprimr1

  by Gilbert B Norman
 
eolesen wrote: Wed Sep 25, 2024 11:16 pm It's almost as tectonic as the paradigm shifts that moved people away from trains and into personal vehicles or planes. The same shift that saw people move away from physical media for their video and music entertainment to streaming. The same shift that has seen the news and entertainment moving from print media to tablets and phones
Well, Mr. Olesen, you've certainly established to what extent I am "out of the chain".

Although "I've given up on Amtrak", with last ride being #52(the day Kobe Bryant was killed), I still have traditional CATV and only have MAX for streaming because its's included with a HoBO subscription, But I never watch it as the picture is very "compressed" on my '08 vintage TV. My phone is an '18 vintage Samsung S9 that I'll keep until the battery dies (I got rid of the landline during '17), and I listen to the news on AM radio (sorry if I think it's downright dangerous to be walking around plugged into headphones), as well as have my daily home delivery of the printed Times and Journal.

But then, I'm 83yo; and trust me, volks, "it ain't cheap" to be stuck in your ways.

But then, if you "think I'm bad", my former neighbors (he's deceased, she's 86yo, in a nursing home, and according to the kids, "wouldn't know me from Adam anymore"), at the end, they still had rabbit ears atop the roof, the phone was rotary dial, and the only reason they had a cell phone was that the kids bought and pay for it, so they could keep better track of their whereabouts. The house has now been chopped down.

My reason for relating all of this is that I concur with Mr. Olesen that times do change, and even if there are slight upticks such as the action Amazon has taken with their professional and technical staff, the WFH trend is in place. I further hold that even if COVID did not occur, the "writing was still on the wall". So far as commercial real estate developers go, while some office buildings can be converted to residential units (there will still be "a pull" for both young people and retirees to reside in the "center city", Loop, downtown, whatever), most cannot and I think to be such an investor today is like unto being told to "never sell your stock in the Pennsylvania Railroad".
  by ElectricTraction
 
COVID forced the adoption of WFH forward at least a decade in about two weeks. Like many other things, COVID was merely an accelerant for existing trends. Whether real estate supply/demand, supply chains that were near the breaking point, etc. The pace of change overwhelmed a lot of things in 2020-2022 however.

I suspect there will be a back and forth with WFH as the economy goes through cycles. It's hard to say how pushes to cut costs (real estate leases) will coincide with having more leverage over employees during economic downturns. Companies will need to learn how to effectively utilize in-office time better than many current do if they want to even have hybrid for 2-3 days a week vs. fully or mostly remote.
  by eolesen
 
ElectricTraction wrote: Thu Sep 26, 2024 2:31 pm COVID forced the adoption of WFH forward at least a decade in about two weeks. Like many other things, COVID was merely an accelerant for existing trends.
Agree entirely. We would have gotten to this point eventually.
  by lensovet
 
Someone should have told about these tectonic shifts to the folks on my keystone evening train today who couldn’t find a seat.

And no, it wasn’t because the train was artificially shortened or some other nonsense.
  by eolesen
 
Well, considering half the stops and probably most of the passengers are from a state that still prohibits people from pumping their own gas, it's safe to say not everyone embraces change at the same pace.

Sent from my SM-S911U using Tapatalk

  by lensovet
 
If you're going to make cheap shots, at least base them on reality.

A grand total of 2 out of 12 stops on this trains are in NJ, and the number of passengers who get off at those stops is 5% of the train at best.

Sometimes it's ok to admit that you're wrong.
  by eolesen
 
Cheap shot yet still accurate as far as NJ being a holdout....

What you're experiencing with "full" trains is still the exception nationally.
  by lensovet
 
The NEC always had ridership in terms of absolute numbers and percentage of overall trips that was leaps and bounds better than elsewhere in the country. So what's your point? That it's the same now post-pandemic?
  by eolesen
 
Well.... my point has remained the same it's been for years -- at a macro level, commuter travel isn't going to recover.

And like clockwork, you keep jumping in with an example from your 70-80 mile commute between almost-PHL and NYC, which a) runs on the NEC which by your own admission never trends the same as the rest of the rail network, and b) is an atypical commuting distance compared to the rest of the country.

"Most" people don't commute three or four hours daily. I know people who do that, but they're by and large single digits of the larger commuting population.

Not trying to be overtly rude, but rather than asking what my point is, perhaps you can explain why your outlier examples matter in the larger discussion.
  by lensovet
 
I never suggested that my commute was typical. My point is that I'm on transit – and seeing transit trends – multiple times a week, contrary to most of the posters here.

As for whether commuter travel will recover, time will tell. fwiw, it was effectively flat for over a decade pre-covid. As of 2023, it had not recovered https://www2.census.gov/programs-survey ... m-home.pdf. I look forward to seeing next year's report. NYC's numbers as of 2023 showed a 90% recovery compared to a 70% recovery nationwide. Regardless, the trend for % of people working from home is a massive bump due to covid and then a continuing decline since. Even if we claim that the 13.8% rounded up to 14% of people continue to work from home forever…it sounds like the remaining 86% have already returned. Some might be driving now rather than taking transit, but the idea that there's some kind of tectonic shift and no one is going to be working from the office anymore anytime in the near future is simply disconnected from reality.
  by ElectricTraction
 
I think regional, non-daily, hybrid commutation, and longer hybrid commutes are more common and will continue to become so as we see-saw back and forth with RTO, which will eventually go back to various hybrid arrangements (mostly) and some more WFH in the long run, even if it takes a few years to get there.
  by RandallW
 
A news report highlights that MUNI is seeing higher than pre-pandemic ridership on non-downtown commuter routes, and significantly less than pre-pandemic ridership at their pre-pandemic most used station.

Raw link because I can't consistently embed media: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3o8wGuW40k
  by RandallW
 
I attended the Hack the Railroad 2024 security conference and one major railroad flat out stated it had been a victim of a false employee attack in their IT department that would not have occurred had in office work been required for that position. The attack was though a scheme similar to this one (the railroad remained deliberately vague on the specifics), but did note that the person interviewed and whose identity was verified was not the person who accessed the systems, they now consider a refusal to be in person periodically and to have a camera on while in meetings an indicator of a threat actor.
  by Gilbert B Norman
 
Love the photo of Berlin's U-Bahn; great way to get around (they sell a pass for €49 a week which is good to/fm the Airport).

FWIW, they sure seem to have returned over there.
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