MELBOURNE, Australia, November 15, 2023–(BUSINESS WIRE)–SafetyWing, global insurance provider for digital nomads and remote teams, proudly announces a strategic partnership with Outstaffer, Global EOR and HR tech company.

This collaboration integrates SafetyWing’s insurance offerings into Outstaffer’s revolutionary SaaS Global Workforce Platform. Outstaffer’s clientele can now provide their globally distributed teams with equitable and comprehensive health benefits, with an exclusive discount of up to 35% below standard individual premiums.

By enabling their customers to offer these benefits, Outstaffer demonstrates their dedication to employee well-being and equips their clients with a competitive edge. With the inclusion of SafetyWing’s health coverage offering, Outstaffer’s customers are now better positioned to attract and retain top global talent.

SafetyWing’s collaboration with Outstaffer aligns with their vision to construct a world without borders, by offering world-class insurance services– one policy they can use in 175+ countries– to more users around the world.

On the new partnership, CEO Thomas Derum said, “This strategic alliance with SafetyWing is more than a collaboration; it’s a revolution in the remote working landscape. In an era where 66% of the workforce deem extensive employee benefits as crucial, it has become imperative for businesses to not only fulfill but exceed the basic offerings of compensation and mandatory benefits to attract and retain the best talent around the world. Together, we’re not just offering health insurance benefits—we’re crafting a world where the wellbeing of remote employees is at the forefront, irrespective of location.”

Co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing, Sondre Rasch, said: “We’re thrilled to announce a strategic partnership with Outstaffer. Remote work is one of the greatest paradigm shifts of our generation, and this revolution is only in its beginnings. SafetyWing was launched because we saw first-hand that there was no global infrastructure to support remote workers. In order to ensure equal opportunities for everyone, SafetyWing is building a global social safety net for remote workers and teams. We’re proud of partnering with Outstaffer, and to empower their clients to provide global health benefits to their distributed teams through our Remote Health product.”

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This partnership signifies a new era for global businesses and remote teams, with two industry leaders coming together from different parts of the world to bridge the gap between global employment and equitable benefits.

For more information or to arrange a demo, visit www.outstaffer.com.

Notes to Editor

About SafetyWing

Launched in 2018, SafetyWing’s vision is to build a global social safety net, making equal opportunities and freedom for everyone attainable worldwide. Its first product, Nomad Insurance, is a global travel medical insurance which quickly experienced massive growth, as it was the first insurance product specifically tailored to digital nomads working outside of their home country. In 2020 SafetyWing launched Remote Health, a health insurance to cover employees and contractors under one plan, making it the world’s first truly global health insurance solution for remote teams. It has since grown on an explosive path, increasing 10x in size since one year ago. Founded by CTO Sarah Sandnes, COO Hans Nyvold Kjellby, and CEO Sondre Rasch, SafetyWing is headquartered in San Francisco, California, but has a 180-strong team of fully remote workers based all over the world.

About Outstaffer

Outstaffer is the developer of a SaaS-based Global Workforce Platform designed to allow companies of all sizes to tap into the global talent pool and scale remote working and distributed teams. Founded in 2020 by Thomas Derum, the platform solves the complexities of giving full-time employment to anyone from around the world with no compliance risk, enabling companies to find and hire top talent, make locally compliant payroll, offer great employee benefits, and equip their remote employees with managed devices and the tools they need to work productively, safely and securely from anywhere.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231115463470/en/

Contacts

SafetyWing:
Stefan Heggelund, Head of Communications
stefanh@safetywing.com

Outstaffer:
media@outstaffer.com

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Earlier this year at an event in San Francisco, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed the idea that fully remote work could replace the value of in-office collaboration. This week, his surging company signed the largest office lease seen in the city since 2018.

In a period of doom and gloom for the commercial real estate sector, hammered by remote work and high vacancy rates in cities across the U.S., the deal offers a dose of hope. And for San Francisco, whose struggles with crime and homelessness have been well documented, it adds to a growing presence of companies involved in the burgeoning field of artificial intelligence.

Since kickstarting the AI boom with the release of ChatGPT last year, OpenAI has quickly become one the world’s most valuable closely held companies. Bloomberg reported earlier this month that OpenAI is in talks to sell shares an $86 billion valuation, and it reported in August that the company is on track to generate $1 billion in annual revenue.

OpenAI is leasing two buildings from Uber, which is “right-sizing” its real estate usage, at the ride-hailing company’s headquarters campus in the Mission Bay neighborhood. An Uber spokesperson confirmed to Fortune that the deal had finally closed. (Since it’s a sublease, landlords had to give their consent, which meant longer negotiations.) OpenAI is taking 486,600 square feet in all in the four-building campus.

As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, office attendance in large cities is still only about half the level seen in 2019. That’s despite a slight uptick recently and tough talk from high-profile CEOs about enforcing return-to-office policies.

As for San Francisco, it notched a record-high 33.9% office vacancy rate—nearly 30 million square feet listed for lease or sublease—in the third quarter, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle. The paper noted that about 150,000 workers could fill all the empty office space.

The lack of all those employees hurts local businesses, including retailers and restaurants. That combined with the crime problem has prompted companies to give up on the city. In August, one of the city’s flagship retailers, Nordstrom, closed its once-vibrant store.

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As the owner of the mall that Nordstrom inhabited noted, “A growing number of retailers and businesses are leaving the area due to the unsafe conditions for customers, retailers, and employees, coupled with the fact that these significant issues are preventing an economic recovery of the area.”

The city’s “doom spiral” fears continue, but the move by OpenAI provides a bit of hope. And it helps that this year other AI firms have also leased office space in San Francisco.

As the Chronicle reported, Hive AI leased 57,117 square feet in a downtown skyscraper next to Salesforce Tower. Hayden AI leased 41,196 square feet, Anthropic leased 17,735, and Tome AI 16,887. (On Friday, Google said that it’s agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, following Amazon saying it will invest up to $4 billion.)

That means five AI companies, including OpenAI, are leasing nearly 620,000 square feet of office space in the city. Of course, that’s still a drop in the bucket compared to amount of vacant space.

“There’s definitely a lot of hope and optimism that [AI] could be the catalyst for the next growth cycle not only for the office market, but for the San Francisco economy,” Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, told the Chronicle. But it could be years before “we see this growth cycle really explode,” if it does at all, he noted.

As it turns out, OpenAI’s office deal closed just as another San Francisco tech company ended a return-to-office experiment. Expensify, with a market cap of about $215 million, said this week that it’s closing an upscale office lounge where employees could enjoy champagne or a draft beer while collaborating in a restaurant-style booth or working on laptops at the bar.

In a blog post this week, Expensify CEO David Barrett described the lounge as an experiment on luring employees back into the office, and he concluded that remote work had won. “We’re just never going back to a regular nine-to-five office culture, a staple of not just our modern culture, but also the foundation of most urban planning,” he wrote.

For his part, OpenAI’s Altman—who has become a household name in the tech world and perhaps beyond—stressed the need for in-person collaboration and noted the shortcomings of remote work during a Stripe conference in San Francisco earlier this year.

“I think definitely one of the tech industry’s worst mistakes in a long time was that everybody could go full remote forever, and startups didn’t need to be together in person and, you know, there was going to be no loss of creativity,” he told attendees. “I would say that the experiment on that is over, and the technology is not yet good enough that people can be full remote forever, particularly on startups.”

OpenAI did not immediately reply to Fortune’s request for comments.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• San Francisco remains firmly at the bottom of US rankings when it comes to office attendance. 
• The city has famously cool summers, so workers don’t need office A/C as much as other cities.
• Washington DC, which is hot and muggy in the summer, ranks top in terms of office attendance.

A tech industry source was in Tokyo this summer, and they came back with an interesting story: More workers in the city are heading back to the office because it’s so damn hot there. When the company is paying for air conditioning, why not go in and stay cool?

This got me thinking about San Francisco’s infamous “doom loop.” This is the cycle where workers stay home and downtown remains relatively empty, hurting businesses that then close, making the location even less inviting. 

This week, in the middle of summer, it was in the 90s and humid in Tokyo. In San Francisco, it was 65 degrees fahrenheit. When it’s this cool, you can comfortably work from home without A/C. 

It’s probably another reason why San Francisco remains firmly at the bottom of the rankings when it comes to office attendance by employees. 

Placer.ai tracks this stuff. Its report for July 2023 shows visits to office buildings in San Francisco are still almost 50% below 2019 levels. That puts it firmly last among major US cities.

What’s the top city in terms of office visits? Washington DC, which is forecast to be 99F on Tuesday. It’s muggy as hell in DC in the summer, too. I know, I lived there for 3 years. And I recall that the A/C was particularly refreshing in the office where I worked back then. No way was I going to sit at home in my small apartment without A/C and sweat all week. 

Tokyo’s office attendance stats are pretty good, too. According to a survey earlier this year, 49% of organizations in Japan’s largest city reported that more than 80% of their employees had returned to the office in 2022.

It’s even happening in the UK, a formerly cold and rainy place that has become blisteringly hot during recent summers. There’s not a lot of A/C there, and many British office workers are yearning for any source of cool breeze, according to Heating & Ventilating Review. 

This HVAC industry publication reported on a recent survey that found Brits are spending an extra 9.2 days per month in the office this year, compared to 2022. Almost half (46%) of those surveyed planned to take advantage of office air conditioning, and 35% said they go into the office when the weather is hot to make use of the A/C.

More CEOs are keen to get employees back to the office now, including several leaders of tech companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. If the city weren’t so cool during the summers, they might get their wish. 

Although, that would mean more energy use for A/C, yet another example of how the RTO craze is bad for the environment.

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The post A Hidden Purpose for San Francisco’s Distant Work ‘Doom Loop’: Air Conditioning appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

By Philippa Maister
July 28, 2023 at 08:23 AM

Demand for office space has fallen almost 16% this year.

In most cities in the U.S., employers are still struggling to convince workers it’s time to go back to the office. That is continuing to depress demand for office space, according to the VTS Office Demand Index (VODI) July 2023 quarterly report.

VTS, a technology platform that provides real-time CRE market information, claims VODI is the earliest available indicator of upcoming office leasing activity and the only one to track new tenant demand.

“Nationally, demand for office space fell 15.9% quarter-over-quarter to a VODI of 53 from 63 in March 2023, and 15.9% annually,” the company reported. And even though a drop in the summer months is normal, this drop was exceptionally large – well above the 0.9% in 2018 or 4.5% in 2019 and 2020.

“A VODI of 53 indicates that new demand for office space was flowing in at 53% of its average level in 2018-2019, i.e. just over half of the pre-pandemic normal,” the report noted. “At 53, the June VODI exceeds 7 of the past 12 monthly readings.”

While some employers “are full steam ahead, capitalizing on more favorable lease terms,” those who are hesitant to make commitments right now are dominating the market, VTS found. Over the past year, the VODI has remained within a relatively narrow range from 46-64. “The VODI’s latest level extends a prolonged stretch of relative stability, suggesting convergence to a post-pandemic state.”

Employers’ efforts to order or entice workers back to the office has given rise to “a slow-moving tug of war” between the two sides, VTS noted. It cites data indicating that nationally about one-third of workdays are worked off-site. On an anecdotal basis, the TAMI sector (technology, advertising, media and information sectors) appeared to favor remote work more than the FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate, and legal) or government sectors.

VTS noted two significant exceptions to the general trend. San Francisco experienced a 10.2% quarter-over-quarter and 5.9% annual growth in office demand, with an increase in the number of prospective new tenants hunting for spaces of more than 50,000 SF. 

And in New York, the VODI was down only 3.9% for the quarter, nearly flat – even though year-over-year, its VODI rose 7.4% — the most of any VODI market. “New York City has experienced a heightened influx of new prospective tenants seeking large spaces,” the report noted, adding that the disproportionately large size of the city’s office market exerts “outsized influence” on the national VODI. Los Angeles saw only a modest VODI quarterly decline. 

However, Chicago, Seattle, Washington, DC and Boston experienced significant fall-offs in demand. In Q2, the average VODI for these cities was 32.4% lower than for the three more office-friendly cities – and 17.5% higher than the rate for the previous quarter.

“As we continue to discover how the Post-Pandemic plays out, it remains to be seen how different sectors’ market use will evolve,” the report commented.

The post There’s a ‘Gradual-Transferring Tug-of-Conflict’ Between Employers and Distant Employees appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Data shows that people who work remotely were more likely to move to a new city during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the years that followed. And while that meant many were leaving expensive metropolitan areas like Los Angeles and New York City, Philadelphia has been less affected by the trend.

According to Census Bureau American Community Survey data recently analyzed by The New York Times, the pandemic has caused an abrupt shift in the number of people working remotely and the number of remote workers willing to go somewhere else. In fact, people working from home were more likely than all other workers to move during the pandemic.

But the effects were not the same everywhere.

While many cities grew the number of remote workers living there, data for 2020-2021 shows that expensive metros lost more residents than they gained, the Times analysis found.

While cities like New York, Chicago, Washington, and Seattle had higher percentages of remote workers than Philadelphia, significantly more remote workers moved out there as well.

New York lost 116,000 remote workers that year. Chicago lost 29,000 players, Washington lost 11,000 players and Seattle lost 3,000 players. Meanwhile, Philadelphia has only lost an estimated 1,000 remote workers, putting it in a neutral zone compared to cities the Times found in the red or “loss” zone.

Larry Eichel, senior adviser to the Pew Charitable Trust’s Philadelphia Research and Policy Initiative, said it’s difficult to quantify exact net gains or losses from survey data, but it’s safe to say that the city isn’t doing well even when it comes to patterns of migration to remote work have made a breakthrough, according to the most recent data.

“Philly obviously doesn’t seem to have been hit as hard as other places,” said Eichel, who has researched the impact of remote work on the city’s economy. “These numbers show that many people who are able to work fully remotely relocated early in the pandemic because they were able to.”

Areas like Austin, Denver, Boston, and Raleigh saw increases in both the number of long-distance workers moving to the city and a net increase in the number of long-distance workers living there. The Times viewed these cities as “win” zones.

Part of this phenomenon is due to remote work becoming more normalized during the pandemic.

Suddenly, employees could keep their current job while working in a more exciting or affordable city. This was particularly the case in cities like New York and San Francisco, where tech workers took part in what has been called the “Great American Migration of 2020” and “urban exodus.”

The most recent data is only up to 2021, as people are surveyed at different times of the year. Therefore, it is difficult to get a complete overview of the impact on cities.

“It’s hard to say because remote work and hybrid work are always changing,” said Eichel.

Other Census Bureau data has shown that younger generations will flock to Philadelphia in 2021, which some attribute to the city’s potential for remote work.

“With the rise of remote or hybrid work schedules, Philadelphia is an ideal home base or work-from-anywhere location for Gen Z seeking the ultimate live-work-play urban experience,” said Angela Val, CEO of Visit Philadelphia , told The Inquirer in March .

» READ MORE: Generation Z is moving to big cities – including Philly – while older generations are fleeing

Experts warn that population datasets are evolving as they include phenomena including students returning home from temporarily closed colleges and wealthy city dwellers fleeing to their beach homes.

Eichel also said the focus on remote workers misses another important group of workers in Philadelphia: hybrid workers.

“I think it’s important to look at remote and hybrid work as two different phenomena,” he said. “When it comes to hybrid working, it makes a big difference for the city whether you come into the office two days a week or four days a week.”

He added that there is evidence that some employers require their employees to come into the office more often, which can help a city’s economy.

Comcast recently announced that starting in the fall, employees would have to report to the office four days a week instead of three. A SEPTA spokesman said the company looks forward to servicing the potential increase in commuter traffic. A pizzeria owner in the Comcast Building said increasing office demands will improve his bottom line.

» READ MORE: At Philly’s largest job fair, some candidates looked for hybrid hours, but there were fewer employers to hire

Eichel said that hybrid work is increasingly reflected in population studies.

But in the meantime, it’s too early to say what that means for Philly’s future.

The post How distant work impacts shifting patterns to and from Philadelphia, different cities appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Masks | Masks | Getty Images

Remote jobs aren’t going away – they’re just shifting from expensive coastal cities like New York and San Francisco.

Faced with labor shortages and rising wages, companies are hiring more remote jobs abroad and in smaller US cities.

During the pandemic, with jobs no longer tied to offices, millions of Americans flocked to cities like Phoenix, Asheville and Boise in search of greener pastures and more affordable housing.

But remote work has also opened up new opportunities for employers. Businesses quickly found that their employees could be productive remotely, often for a third of the cost, by expanding their location requirements.

Remote recruiting is expanding beyond its traditional strongholds like India and creating new “zoomtowns” overseas and in parts of the US Midwest.

It’s more cost-effective for companies to move some positions overseas, as wages in the US are often “double or triple what workers in countries like Mexico, India and the Philippines” and these workers can do just as well as a fully remote workers in the US,” says Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University who has studied work-from-home for decades.

Latin American countries in particular have benefited from this trend as they share a time zone with the USA. For example, the number of North American companies with remote workers in Central America and the Caribbean grew 300% between 2020 and 2023. according to a new study by Lightcast.

Q2, an Austin-based financial firm, outsourced more than 90 engineering, marketing, product design and other jobs to Mexico and India last year.

Executives pondered the new recruiting strategy in late 2020, says Kim Rutledge, Q2’s executive vice president of people, as competition for talent was fierce and the company struggled to fill open positions.

While executives have been “skeptical and a little resistant” to hiring remote workers across time zones, Rutledge says they have been “overwhelmed” and “really excited” by the talent they have found in cities like Monterrey in northern Mexico and Bengaluru south india.

In the second quarter, 2,200 people were employed, around 20% of them abroad. However, Rutledge expects that proportion to “grow significantly” in the coming months as the company plans to hire more staffing and administrative roles overseas.

The potential to cut costs and attract new talent has also prompted companies to recruit more remote candidates in smaller, cheaper cities in the US Midwest. “For example, if your budget for hiring a remote software developer in California is $100,000, those same skills could be available in parts of the central US for 60% of the cost,” says George Denlinger, president of Technology Talent Solutions at Robert Half.

Illinois, Ohio, and Nebraska have become hotspots for remote work opportunities, according to Rutledge and Denlinger, primarily because they are densely populated, have lower costs of living, and are home to several top-notch colleges and universities.

According to Layla O’Kane, a senior economist and director of research at Lightcast, there has been a “significant increase” in the number of remote marketing, engineering and manufacturing job postings open to international candidates and applicants across the United States.

Bloom also expects more service support jobs, including software developers, human resources coordinators, and payroll administrators, to be offshored over the next decade.

Whether and how a job will be affected by this trend depends on the level of personal interaction the job requires as well as how senior it is, Denlinger says.

“If you, as a manager or supervisor, are expected to lead a team, mentor young people and set the culture, the likelihood of it being a remote job that can be done in a different time zone is far less likely” , he adds.

Q2 takes these two factors into account when deciding which jobs should be done remotely and where. “For a project manager who’s in a more straightforward role, it doesn’t matter where he sits,” explains Rutledge. “But I do care about the location of my senior HR business partner who is expected to check in regularly with our executives because the majority of our executives are still in Austin.”

If you’re hoping for a remote job, you can improve your chances of getting hired by targeting companies headquartered in expensive regions and improving your soft skills.

“It depends on your salary expectations and your cost of living, but if you’re based in Oklahoma, for example, and you’re applying for a remote job at a company in New York City, you might have more flexible pay options,” says Denlinger. “You can definitely emphasize that in your application or your interview, because that will be attractive for some employers.”

However, hiring experts say the key factor that drives an employer to choose one remote applicant over another is often a person’s soft skills.

“The best way to differentiate yourself is by showing genuine enthusiasm for the company’s initiatives and a willingness to learn and adapt,” says Rutledge.

Communication, problem-solving and collaboration are other soft skills companies are increasingly emphasizing when hiring remotely, adds Denlinger. “Hiring managers may start their search by emphasizing the importance of finding someone with strong technical expertise,” he says, “but nine times out of ten, when I ask them why they hired someone, they answer me always that they have chosen the best candidate.” Soft Skills.”

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Tech CEO Flo Crivello was passionate about the way Covid was transforming work — so much so that he founded a company in 2020 with the goal of helping teams building virtual office software to work remotely.

But three years later, he’s completely flipped that theory. While building his new startup, Lindy.Ai, which uses artificial intelligence as personal assistants, he has come to the conclusion that remote work simply won’t work for the company he and his employees are building.

Last month, Crivello sent a memo to his team of 22, explaining the reasons for his resignation and calling people back to work in San Francisco. The company has signed a lease at 1841 Market St. on the edge of the Mission District and is in the process of installing desks and furniture.

“To be honest, it’s a bit embarrassing for me to do a 180 like that after hitting the distant drum so hard,” Crivello said in an interview. “But this isn’t about, ‘This is a team that didn’t do it right or doesn’t know what they’re doing.'”

Lindy Drope (left) and Flo Crivello (right) work in their new San Francisco office on June 23, 2023. Lindy founder and CEO Flo Crivello is preparing for his employees to return to the workplace after working remotely for the first time since the pandemic. | Isaac Ceja/The Standard

Ultimately there is ego and there are business realities. Crivello said the growing consensus among himself and his founding cohort is that there’s simply no substitute for working in person. For one thing, virtual meeting technology sometimes just doesn’t work, and even when it does, the call quality just isn’t up to scratch.

“The experiment is over; We tried and failed as an industry,” Crivello said. “It’s hard to beat how the brain has evolved over millions of years for synchronous face-to-face collaboration. Everyone just wants to get out of the damn Zoom meeting.”

His thoughts echo the growing chorus of public comments from technology leaders like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who called the industry’s rush to adopt permanent remote work one of its “worst mistakes in a long time.”

Garry Tan, the CEO of Y Combinator, one of the country’s leading startup incubators, said at the Axios BFD Dealmakers Summit in San Francisco that he was focused on reintroducing aspects of the startup incubator in person. Y Combinator’s most recent participants met in person 86% of the time, and he plans to push that number to “99-100%” this time.

Tan pointed out the impact that face-to-face conversations and meetings can have, especially for companies in the early stages of their development.

“The one team that is staring at each other and has extremely high bandwidth communications will probably beat that [remote] Team nine times out of ten,” Tan said.

Some larger companies are also requiring their employees to return to the office, at least part-time. Meta, for example, recently told employees they must return to work three days a week starting in September.

Lindy founder and CEO Flo Crivello sits during a remote meeting in San Francisco June 23, 2023. | Isaac Ceja/The Standard

Real estate sources say AI firms are among the companies currently looking for large office space. City leaders were more than happy to take the baton, with Mayor London Breed recently proclaiming San Francisco the “AI Capital of the World.”

“It seems to be an area where there is actually growth. “I think that’s particularly interesting at a time when big tech companies are still on the decline,” said Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist. “Of course, I think AI is a big demand engine at the moment.”

The data so far shows no changing views on remote work in the tech world. Office vacancies in San Francisco are at record levels, and downtown pedestrian traffic lags far behind other U.S. cities compared to pre-pandemic numbers.

For his part, Crivello estimated that 90% of people were thrilled with the news of the return to the office and about half of the team would relocate to San Francisco. To ease the transition, the company provides bonuses, relocation allowances and salary increases.

Lindy exempts people hired as part of a remote structure, but no additional hires will be made outside of San Francisco. His note to employees includes an FAQ section that responds to some of the city’s perceived issues related to crime and taxes.

However, Crivello is not blind to the benefits of working remotely, particularly in terms of work-life balance and flexibility for those with families. However, he believes there is no better place or method than to build an AI startup locally in San Francisco.

Lindy founder and CEO Flo Crivello poses for a portrait at the new Lindy office in San Francisco on June 23, 2023. | Isaac Ceja/The Standard

As a metaphor to explain this, he used the example of lichens, which often grow on rocks or trees and are formed by a synergistic combination of algae or bacteria and a fungus.

“The Bay Area is very similar because there’s a close relationship between the three things – investors, founders and employees,” Crivello said. “That’s strong for the technology and even stronger for the AI ​​because everyone is here.”

The post Is San Francisco’s Distant Work Backlash Lastly Gaining Steam? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Still, in San Francisco — whose ridership is down 60 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels — BART is weighing whether to improve service at nights and weekends in a gamble they hope will increase off-peak foot traffic becomes. But the system’s budget constraints mean it would have to eliminate less popular services elsewhere to do so.

“You have to take something, and it’s very difficult to take service away from drivers,” said Alicia Trost, a BART spokeswoman. “But we think there are things we can do.”

Federal funds typically account for about 15 percent of transit budgets. And the federal infrastructure package that Congress passed in 2021 committed $39 billion in new funding for mass transit, but much of that is earmarked for major capital work rather than operations.

That’s putting pressure on statehouses, where fights over money have become partisan, and both geographic and rural lawmakers from both parties are wondering why their constituents should advocate making life easier in cities that already seem to have everything.

The Philadelphia-anchored rail and bus system, known as SEPTA, faces a quarter-billion-dollar budget gap in the coming years, which without government help could force 20 to 30 percent fare increases or service cuts. But like Washington, the state government is divided — a Democratic governor and House of Representatives competing with a Senate controlled by rural Republicans reluctant to spend more in the state’s largest city.

“They don’t love Philly and don’t really care about transit in Philadelphia,” Leslie Richards, general manager and CEO of SEPTA, said in an interview.

SEPTA officials must go through a two-step process to receive local money. They are walking the halls of the Harrisburg Capitol with a bill that would allow five counties that the agency serves to collect taxes to help the agency. Even if it becomes law, they still have to convince local politicians to go through with it.

In New York, a proposal to raise $800 million for the MTA by raising payroll taxes for large corporations in areas served by the agency met with such fierce opposition from suburban lawmakers that it is now proposed only for corporations within the city limits.

The tax hike and other state and city subsidies will help close the MTA’s $600 million deficit this year, which is expected to reach $3 billion in 2025, but not enough to avoid a fare hike . Part of the funding is earmarked for an increased subway service, which the agency plans to use for more evening and weekend trips.

The post Distant work is straining public transit — and plenty of businesses are caught appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Rush hour traffic crawls along Highway 101 into San Francisco, California on Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

There’s a new mystery thousands of Bay Area commuters are trying to solve. Downtown offices that were once teeming with techies and lawyers are deserted. BART’s ridership is down 60% after many passengers fled the system three years ago and never returned.

So why are the freeways full again?

Radio stations ping with morning traffic jam updates: The MacArthur Maze is a mess, I-880 a nuisance, and the 101 a zoo — though remote working has led to a colossal shift in travel patterns and taxpayers have spent billions of dollars providing buses, Trains and other alternatives to driving. Ultimately, the long-term solution to resurgent congestion is perhaps the least-common idea yet: making it even more expensive to commute by car.

“It’s a paradox, isn’t it?” said Alexandre Bayen, an engineering professor at UC Berkeley who studies traffic patterns. “We’re busy. It may not be the exact same times, under the same circumstances. But we are working at full capacity.”

Commuters travel across the Bay Bridge towards San Francisco on Thursday, March 30, 2023 during the morning commute in San Francisco, California. (Photo: Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

Perhaps nowhere is this more visible than at the Bay Bridge. While overall bridge traffic is still down about 10% compared to 2019, morning commutes from Oakland to San Francisco are often worse than before the pandemic. Riders fill the bridge during rush hour, and morning travel speeds are 32% slower than four years ago, according to congestion data tracking speeds from Treasure Island to the Fremont Street exit in San Francisco. But the afternoon commute is still easier for many — speeds at the Bay Bridge average 34% faster exiting San Francisco.

Even reverse commuters feel some pain. Ian Brown, 47, is driving from San Francisco to Los Gatos for a job at Netflix. “You kind of got used to putting it in cruise control and going 75 mph,” he said. “Maybe three or four months ago you’ll turn the corner and the traffic will stop. It’s all about reactive driving again.”

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Regional data shows the return to traffic chaos. INRIX, a traffic analysis company, found that Bay Area congestion has fully returned to pre-pandemic levels in 2022. The region ranks 15th in the world for traffic congestion, with drivers spending an average of 97 hours in traffic last year. There is a caveat to the study’s conclusion: congestion on the city’s roads remains low, while the freeways have filled.

Increasing highway congestion is particularly confusing when you consider not only remote work but also historically high gas prices and recently increased bridge tolls, factors expected to discourage driving.

“I think traffic will only get worse,” said Bob Pishue, author of the INRIX study. “There’s a lot of demand and not enough street supply.”

Rush hour traffic crawls along Highway 101 into San Francisco, California on Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo: Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

Traffic patterns also underscore a new system of winners and losers – at least when it comes to road transport – brought on by the pandemic. People who work from home, more often employees who can shop at lunchtime or hit the gym, see far less congestion. Workers who have to do their jobs in person — like plumbers, nurses and teachers — are back on congested roads.

But why do autobahns fill up so quickly?

Michael Manville, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, said Californians find many reasons to keep driving even as they commute less. One reason is that driving became even easier when COVID-19 and remote working emptied the streets. That only enticed drivers to fill the freeways until the congestion returned.

“Traffic jams aren’t just annoying — they’re a deterrent,” Manville said. “When the traffic eases, people will see that the freeway is empty and they will get in their cars and go somewhere else.”

At the region’s most notorious bottleneck, the Bay Bridge, commuters pack their journey into too few hours, exacerbating congestion. East Bay drivers driving down the peninsula from the Bay Bridge witness some of the region’s worst morning commutes, with westbound I-80 speeds dropping 44% compared to 2019 as they approach Highway 101 .

If upside-down work patterns can’t end traffic congestion, is there an answer to the region’s traffic woes?

Rush hour traffic crawls along Interstate 280 into San Francisco, Calif. Thursday morning, March 30, 2023. (Photo by Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

One solution to highway congestion is to get people out of their solo driving habits and into trains and buses, or carpooling. In 2018, voters across the Bay Area voted to increase their bridge tolls to now $7 on promises of freeing highways from congestion. Funds are flowing to send BART trains to San Jose, expand ferry service, and build a network of express lanes. These measures are intended to make the region’s ailing local transport system a viable alternative to car travel.

But changing driver behavior is a difficult task. A common refrain, supported by research, is that voters often approve public transit funding in the hope that others will use the system and make their commute easier.

Some public transport advocates say commuters’ reliance on one-person vehicles and aversion to public transit has hardened over the past three years. They point to concerns about the reliability and safety of BART, as well as an ongoing stigma that riding public transit poses a health risk. For others, commuting to work a few times a week means they’re more likely to grit their teeth in traffic, even as congestion mounts.

“People still commute,” said Emily Loper, vice president of the Bay Area Council, which tracks return-to-office trends. “You just choose to drive more than before.”

Now, transit planners in the Bay Area are landing with a controversial idea: Really reducing congestion is less about encouraging transit ridership and more about making it more expensive to drive.

At the heart of the plan is a two-year study commissioned by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission into imposing a per-mile charge for driving on freeways in the Bay Area. Some plans under study also include charging on roads adjacent to freeways or a toll for downtown access in San Jose, San Francisco and Oakland. The study should pave the way for the implementation of a new motorway toll system in 2035.

Without a new “stick” to add to the “carrot” of improved public transport, drivers will stay on the streets and the collective misery of congestion will only worsen, Anup Tapase, chief planner of the MTC, said during a meeting at the MTC Month.

It is a method of reducing traffic congestion that has gained traction among many experts.

But in the Bay Area, there are deep concerns about the potential impact of congestion charges on the region’s low-income communities. The move could also spark an uprising among voters who are already paying the highest gas prices in the country.

“The word freeway has a very deep meaning in Californian culture. People believe that driving on these roads is a right,” MTC committee member Frank Welte said at a meeting earlier this month. “Any motorist who now drives for free on a freeway, who starts paying a toll, will see it as treason and theft.”

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