MattW mentioned that "the morning commute load will be more spread throughout the day." If the evening rush were spread out too, this traffic pattern could be beneficial to commuter rail. Fewer crews would be needed without the intensive peak hours, and equipment sitting idle during the day would be less common. Off topic, but during the time I was freelancing, which was in the last century, to be deductible a home office had to be exclusively an office. I never could take the deduction. The rule may be different today, though …
- Yes, businesses will embrace a work-from-home model and will reduce their office space... and how much they travel. Zoom et all works well. Most meetings can be done all remote. This means you really don't need to travel unless a value-benefit analysis says it's worth it.
- Certain businesses require people for them to work, even if it's a monitoring station where someone has to be there in case something goes wrong. This includes Internet-connected data centers (note: I work for a company that hosts a good chunk of the Internet).
- Based on this, it's likely that we'll see 65-75% of office capacity once we get to "masks off" and a new office dynamic is shaken out.
- Local transit (bus, subway, light rail) will recover quickly. Folks gotta work!
- Commuter rail will take longer to recover, but some speed-ups are basically location based.
- MARC/VRE will recover quickly because it's connected to DC. The value-benefit is too high here when you're dealing with regulators. It's likely that both will resume full schedules within a year of "masks off"
- Stock and commodity exchanges will also re-energize commuter rail. Metra (Chicago) will recover fast as it has numerous commodity exchanges. NJ Transit, Metro-North, and LIRR will also recover because Wall Street. Given pre-pandemic crowding, I doubt you'll see many trains trimmed off the old schedule.
- Everywhere else? Slow recovery, and likely many schedule changes. There probably won't be full service past the 1 year post-"masks-off" marker.