A 10% increase in remote workers could lead to a 10% drop in carbon emissions from the transportation sector, reducing nearly 200 million tons of carbon dioxide annually in the U.S. However, the same proportion of remote work would result in a significant 27% decrease in transit fare revenue nationally, amounting to $3.7 billion lost.
"Transit agencies need to be very concerned," said Shenhao Wang, Ph.D., a professor of urban planning at UF. "Yet overall we would expect less energy consumption from reduced car travel. So the picture is very complicated, and whether the effects are positive or negative depends on the stakeholder."
Urban planners have considered remote work as a means to lessen traffic congestion and emissions. The pandemic's rise in remote work allowed researchers to explore its impacts on urban mobility, a trend that was hard to gauge previously when fewer employees worked from home.
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