Will They Ever Return?

If "they will return", then possibly the Agencies can find insight from this Alstom design engineer;

https://www.wsj.com/video/series/pro-pe ... 241024_B_1

RandallW wrote: ↑Fri Oct 25, 2024 5:27 amI attended the Hack the Railroad 2024 security conference and one major railroad flat out stated it had been a victim of a false employee attack in their IT department that would not have occurred had in office work been required for that position. The attack was though a scheme similar to this one (the railroad remained deliberately vague on the specifics), but did note that the person interviewed and whose identity was verified was not the person who accessed the systems, they now consider a refusal to be in person periodically and to have a camera on while in meetings an indicator of a threat actor.

There are ways to secure systems without requiring people to all be in one office. In fact, at my company, Zoom camera use is disallowed/discouraged in many areas due to ITAR and technical data, even on ZoomGov.

https://www.panynj.gov/port-authority/e ... on-pa.html

In September, PATH ridership grew to 5.12 million passengers, which was the commuter rail’s busiest since pre-pandemic February 2020
…
On Oct. 14, PATH expanded capacity on the Newark-World Trade Center line. Nine-car trains are now in place on all trainsets that PATH operates on the line, on both weekdays and weekends. The addition of a ninth car represents a 12.5 percent increase in capacity on each train. PATH has also decreased wait times for trains running during the morning peak hours on the Journal Square-33 St. line from five to four minutes. These shorter waits and more frequent service went into effect on Oct. 14.
…
September 2024’s monthly total represented 74 percent of the same metric in September 2019, the system’s best performance to date relative to the same month in 2019.
…
Weekends also continued to see robust growth. Average Saturday ridership during the month surpassed average Saturday ridership in September 2019 by about 2 percent, finishing at 117,930 riders. September 2024’s average Sunday ridership of 87,805 came in just 3 percent below September 2019.

Amazon, Starbucks........the list of large employers with edicts of "RTO, or else" goes on; and with the massive layoffs affecting Professional and Technical employees, employers, no doubt cheered on by commercial real estate interests, have been gaining the upper hand.

Mass transit agencies, restaurants, "watering holes", et al are surely also cheering.

Gilbert B Norman wrote: ↑Fri Nov 01, 2024 6:31 amAmazon, Starbucks........the list of large employers with edicts of "RTO, or else" goes on; and with the massive layoffs affecting Professional and Technical employees, employers, no doubt cheered on by commercial real estate interests, have been gaining the upper hand.

This is going to be a back-and-forth. The long-term trend is going to be towards more hybrid and WAH. There are many jobs that can be done just fine that way.

Let's see what's going to happen with MARC and VRE. Will they be the first two agencies to report "we're back to '19".

Various newssources are reporting that Elon and Swami will be recommending to President-Elect Trump an RTO5X for the Federal Workforce. This development, if it comes to pass, will surely restore VRE to '19 ridership levels, and considering that MARC also serves Baltimore, with its more private sector workforce, may not be quite enough, but will have it "make a stab" at a like return.

Odd, I was hearing differently. With so much WFH, that Federal office space would be consolidated, and the surplus sold off...

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The DOGE leaders wrote an opinion piece in the WSJ (if I recall correctly) that they would shrink the Federal workforce by forcing RTO5X to cause mass resignations, so things go their way, VRE and MARC will not report a return to pre-COVID numbers (or if they do only for a very short period of time).

For the short term, RTOx5 would definitely cause resignations for those who left DC yet are still earning DC pay differentials.

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Here is the Journal column authored by Elon and Swami noted by Mr. Randall W.

Here is reporting by the New York Post.

Swami means "greatly revered" or holy man, and unless that's truly sincere, please just use Vivek..........

An op-ed doesn't necessarily translate into policy two months out from the inauguration. And while some might read this as "will require" it does seem to be a hypothetical example more than a definite plan at this stage.

My son is a GS11, and his group has already looked at the cost saving of reducing office space. That's a hard number to ignore if savings and efficiency are the real goals.

Mr. Olesen, OK; Vivek.

Now let's see what kind of lobby the Beltway landlords have with the GSA.

Finally Mr. Olesen, I would guess as an 11, your son is beneath the level at which Trump is contemplating "politicizing" his position. However, I'll bet there are a few 15's and higher "trembling".

Force cuts will depend on the agency.

IRS is in Trump’s sights. It was the last term as well.

A host of agencies within Education, HHS, HUD and Defense will be targeted.

Interior and Ag will take hits, as will EPA.

Amtrak, and Federal Transit Administration too.

That’s my mark on the wall.

Gilbert B Norman wrote:as an 11, your son is beneath the level at which Trump is contemplating "politicizing" his position. However, I'll bet there are a few 15's and higher "trembling".

I suspect the 14s are worried as well. Fresh eyes tend to be less blind to incompetent subordinates...

He's looking at it as a lot of upward mobility opportunities if it does indeed hit his agency.

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RandallW wrote: ↑Fri Nov 22, 2024 7:16 pmThe DOGE leaders wrote an opinion piece in the WSJ (if I recall correctly) that they would shrink the Federal workforce by forcing RTO5X to cause mass resignations, so things go their way, VRE and MARC will not report a return to pre-COVID numbers (or if they do only for a very short period of time).

That's actually one of the less crazy things these folks have come up with. A lot of big companies are doing RTO5X with the assumption/side benefit/goal built in of some people leaving/retiring as a result.

The problem is that is a short-sighted and frankly stupid method, as the people who are leaving often aren't the ones that you want to leave.