Really? I’m an office worker and the vast majority of people I work with want to strike a happy balance. If 1 day a week was the norm before, it will probably be 2 days a week going forward. Many people need to meet clients (often for the first time) and people will still need to show their face in the office too.
Yes wfh will increase compared to before, but I’m not sure about the prevalence of travelling just for a 1 hour meeting was that great before hand either. Video conferencing at work is very common. E.g. 3 or 4 meeting rooms at offices around the country join together for an hour meeting using a reliable connection. Each office may have 3 or 4 people in it, with a couple dialling in from home. However replicating that with 12-16 connections to people’s laptops on their own WiFi lines is not as reliable.
The other side of this argument about reduced travel is also reduced car journeys? I don’t hear much about that, in fact the opposite, which tells me that people are travelling.
WFH 3 days a week is 60% of the time, however that's unlikely to be the average, as there's likely to be a noticeable number who or not to WFH either at all or other than for one off events. A fair chunk of that will be down to those who live alone, or house share with people they can live with but not 24/7, or those who have other reasons why they'd rather be in the office.
Then there's going to be those (trainees, those with a poor work ethic/who aren't as productive at home) who will be required to work on the office.
Chances are a 50% WFH rate for those who can do so is likely to be fairly high, likewise 70% of all jobs being suitable for WFH would likely be fairly high, given that 65% of rail travel is commuting that's a likely fall of 23%. (Feel free to argue why my figures might be too low).
A 20% fall would just roll is back to 2012 passenger numbers, therefore if there was likely to be a need for infrastructure spending for a project in 2012 then chances are we'd need to carry on with the investment.
One thing which is overlooked is that of car use, in that because of the way people travel (80% of miles by car, 10% by rail and 10% by other modes) that small changes from road to rail could see large changes in the number of miles traveled by rail.
Whilst currently people are avoiding using rail, that's unlikely to be the case going forwards. Anyway, even though rail is likely to see people reduce their use of or sure to WFH, the same is also true of private cars.
Probably not in the percentages which rail is likely to see, however even a 2.5% shift from road to rail would then reverse a 20% fall in rail use.
2.5% for someone driving 10,000 miles a year that's 250 miles, whilst it's unlikely that everyone would increase their rail use by that much, it's a small enough figure that 0.5% (rolling back 4%) could be achieved with 1:10 doing 500 miles a year (or any of those 10 doing any number of miles to total those 500 miles).
Even that might be optimistic, however the point still stands that a fairly small shift (0.5%) from road to rail could still result a +4% change in rail use (or any other x8 factor of whatever shift that there is).
Given that the average annual car ownership costs are over £3,000 (yes I know that it's possible to do lower than that, but that's how averages work), if you reduce your annual miles by 5,000 miles (18 miles each way to work, now reduced by WFH 3 days a week) whilst you're costs may fall to £2,500 due to the reduced miles that's still 50p/mile. That's a lot more costly than the 30p/mile than it cost before.
