America's commute to work is getting longer and longer

So we stay, I do hybrid/flex and only come in about half the time.

I use this phrase a lot of times: "money buys options" (not the securities kind)

What makes inner suburbs of many larger cities attractive is that they provide access to major city amenities without the downsides of living in an urban core.

The emissions of cars for the US is much higher than most people expect at 1.7 billion tons, while air conditioning is about 117 million tons. A/C also peak matches solar, which makes the emissions for it easier to cut.

Heat is harder to get numbers on, but I also think most oversized suburban houses are in the sunbelt these days, plus I don't think a home office swings it too much from the baseline heating to keep the pipes from freezing.

If I could’ve found a decent apartment in the city for the same price as my house, I likely would’ve opted for the apartment instead because being within walking distance of essentials and things to do is very compelling. Unfortunately there’s not much in US cities that can be had for the same price, and what little can isn’t pleasant to spend extended amounts of time in as one does with remote work.

This doesn’t have to be a problem. In Tokyo for instance there’s plenty of suitable apartments for a decent price, especially if you’re ok with downtown being a 20m train ride away. We don’t build our cities like that, though.

My emissions 100% went up with RW.

I moved to Wyoming from New York, bought a roomy house. bought a car for the first time and fly constantly. The quality of life is great. And I still drop into the office every few months. But it’s no environmental panacea.

What?

1: https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...

One thing about these workers is there is a limit on density, and in many cases a strong correlation with the number of people who live nearby. There are only so many janitors you need, even for a large office building. Same with health care workers. The number you need is a function of the number of beds the hospital has, its size, and how busy it is - which has a large correlation with how many people live around it. Same with cooks. How many cooks you need in an area is limited by restaurants and kitchen space and how many people are around.

Not so with workers who could be remote. You can pack them in by the thousands and tens of thousands into cubicles in downtown skyscrapers. They in tern drive demand for cooks who have to come work downtown in an area they could not afford.

If you make the people that could be remote, remote you reduce this pressure. No longer are you packing tens of thousands of people in a very small, expensive part of town. This reduces the number of cooks you need in the very dense expensive part of town. This reduces the cooks who have to commute to a part of town they could never afford to live in.

In addition, with the reduced number of potentially remote workers who are paying extra to cut down their commute, you reduce the price pressure of housing.

Remote work reduces density, lowers price pressure, and increases the correlation of work to where people actually live.

So it benefits even the jobs that can’t be remote.

Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to.

This would be akin to getting a free infrastructure upgrade for those who truly need it.

Perhaps a simple example is through remote work meaning fewer commuters, and so less traffic, less crowded trains, etc.

But also consider that schools and hospitals need to be near centers of population - if people are moving out of cities into smaller towns, then, over time, schools in those towns will need to grow, and those in the cities shrink, thus (one would hope) allowing teachers and hospital workers more affordable accomodation, close to their work too.

But, on the other hand, roles for janitors and restaurant workers may be reduced (if people are WFH and not needing office cleaning, and going out for lunch).

And thus wages should increase for "support workers", currently the lifestyles of those living in such high desireable areas are subsidised by those taking terrible commutes.

Janitors and restaurant workers are good examples, however hospital workers can be hybrid; remote classrooms have been a real thing since the 21st century.

> Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people.

It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun".

I know prices may not be a perfect corollary to pollution but people driving that much to work are pretty likely to spend more money fueling their vehicles than they are on electric + gas for their homes.