Midwestern US here and I don’t notice a difference in traffic now vs preCovid.

I will say that 2020 was the best year ever for road cycling. The roads on Sunday morning with no church services were like endless bike paths around here😎

What times of day do you ride? I have noticed that bike commutes to work are waaaay better (due to work from home people), but biking at lunch time is worse (people tend to do more errands at lunch or around lunch now). Weekends are about the same. I live in a tech community and the biggest "other employer" within 5 km in Dept of National defence so even the NDHQ staff are largely on hybrid. But when I am bike commuting it is waaay better!!!

I see way more cars where I live too. Not necessarily where I ride but in town yes. Way more electric vehicles too. I’m okay with them just don’t have one yet.

I get that some specific jobs are 100% in person. Like at our factory a person replacing broken machinery daily. But other jobs like ours easily are 75% in front of a computer screen where that period could be anywhere. Then maybe in person one day a week or maybe two. We proved it works fine during Covid but corporate world goes “nah fuck it, go back to burning gas just to put butts in chairs”.

To me it proves modern weak leadership as they have no fucking clue what people actually accomplish or not without needing to physically see the person’s butt in a chair.

In Norcal, it's like 50% less cars than pre-COVID due to work-from-home several days a week at all the major tech companies. (Thank god.)

But it's like 95% more cars than DURING covid, where almost nobody was out.

I've noticed it at all times of the day during the week. I live in Victoria on Vancouver Island. Roads where you used to be able to do longer intervals duringt he day that used to be very quite are much busier, I'm hoping for $3 to $4 litre gas price whihc may slow down traffic.

Nashville area - way more cars, likely due to an influx of people moving here and the massive tourist crowd that we get. And the drivers are the worst. Much crazier than pre-Covid and worse than any Bay Area traffic I drove in for 20+ years.

---

clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

By "way more cars," I think you have massively understated the case in Nashville. I'm actually finding the roads now unrideable. I just imagine the rest of the US is empty with all of the influx here. Every rural road has three new subdivisions going in, people much less tolerant of cyclists. The road surfaces have too much traffic to fix on any significant level. These last 5 years have been a crazy change in the landscape.

Yeah, it depends on where you live. Just moved away from salt lake city, but 2020-2023 there was an insane increase in how busy roads are, to the point that some of the big rides around town were basically unrideable

Ditto here in the suburbs of Charlotte NC, except squeezed in between your three new subdivisions on every road are new massive “luxury” apartment complexes as well.

1000% they need to have some kind of disincentive for driving - dont know if its higher fuel price, or tolling / charging for use of roads at certain times of the day on certain days. I live in a big city hihgly dense area and its always magic at Xmas time and long weekends where no one is on the road and its just people walking. Maybe some kind of higher garage fee, so if you dont need your car or drive below a certain number of miles per year you get a higher charge. And for those people, they are then incentivised to public transport or ride.

I wonder if any ST threads have had this discusn before

I think that you need to take a look at the population increase of the world/us in general...it's not just your corner of it...

NYC suburbs chiming in. No additional cars when compared to pre-covid. Road maintenance has definitely taken a turn for the worse. Roads haven't been repaved in years are scattered with pot holes. They also dig up or add a utility lines and do a half-ass, lumpy re-patch instead of repaving the roads.

I would say probably less, maybe the same, but not a dramatic change in either case…mainly due to the rise in popularity of micro-commuting ehre now.

No, haven't noticed that. Maybe the opposite.

Yes, Tennessee has killed my love of riding my bike. In San Francisco, I could ride a good 100 miles solo from my house. Here, I stick to the Greenway or the Trace. When I first moved here, I used to go ride a lot out of Franklin/WillCo. or up through White's Creek, etc.

---

clm
Nashville, TN
https://twitter.com/ironclm | http://ironclm.typepad.com

on the road bike messenger for nearly 10 years. traffic is down, thanks to work from home. BUT, reckless driving up thanks to lack of enforcement, high usage of cellphones while driving.

Perhaps there was more migration to more so called "attractive locations" as people moved during the pandemic for lifestyle consideration while "working from home".

I work from home now so I'm sometimes out on the roads midday, which I would almost never do while having a commuting job.
I find traffic is spread more evenly throughout the day so there are no quiet times.

---

Swim - Bike - Run the rest is just clothing changes.

I run at 5AM in the dark, year-round, in a large US city. I have definitely seen an up-tick in early morning commuters post-Covid. That said, I am still able to run down the middle of any street on my route virtually unimpeded.