Beverly Taylor can’t figure out why her commute has become more congested. When summer ended and schools resumed this fall, her typical 50-minute drive from Bowie to downtown Washington began taking 75 minutes, worse than before the coronavirus pandemic started.
“I don’t understand, because downtown is so vacant,” said Taylor, 60, a human resources director at a law firm. The snarls have stretched through the weekend, she said, the Beltway seemingly more crowded than before. “I feel like I’ve got a rush hour seven days a week.”
Taylor is among hundreds of thousands of drivers and transit riders facing the pain and befuddlement of Washington’s evolving commute, a world shaped by 3½ years of human, corporate and federal decisions that have transformed traditional patterns. Traffic and travel data shows how contradictory forces — and the disproportionate return of cars at the expense of transit — have shaken a balance between the region’s road and rail networks, often resulting in miserable results.
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A call by President Biden to return more federal workers to their government offices this fall is threatening to inject new disruptions into a system in which small shifts have outsize effects.
More people are working from home, but fewer employees who commute to an office are taking Metrorail, which is gumming up roads. Drivers with the flexibility to arrive in the office later, or leave earlier, are extending slowdowns beyond traditional rush hours. Meanwhile, the region’s transit and commuter rail systems are operating well below capacity.
Traffic data compiled by analytics firm INRIX shows driving on some major roads is slower during certain hours each day than before the pandemic started, but faster on other roads. Using other data funded through the U.S. Department of Transportation, researchers at the University of Maryland said they have seen an increase in average trip times across the Washington area, compared with before the pandemic.
Cinzia Cirillo, a University of Maryland civil engineering professor and interim director of its Maryland Transportation Institute, said slight increases or decreases in traffic can bring major changes to packed roads. A small drop in the number of cars might provide relief, while a comparable increase could generate gridlock.
Cirillo and fellow U-Md. researcher Guangchen Zhao tapped a trove of travel data from cellphone users to demystify shifts in driver behavior in the region.
They looked at how long it took to drive between thousands of neighborhoods in D.C., Virginia and Maryland, comparing September 2019 with September 2022. They found the average travel time had increased about 20 percent, to 35 minutes.
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Researchers also found support for Taylor’s sense that roads are increasingly crowded on weekends. Average travel times between those same neighborhoods grew more on Saturdays and Sundays, rising 25 percent to about 32 minutes, they said.
Cirillo said that weekend increase reflects a transportation phenomenon known as the “substitution effect.”
Many Washington-area employees work from home some days each week, then use the saved commuting time for more travel on weekends, she said. The results echo those from a study Cirillo did in Belgium, where she found that people who worked from home ended up traveling more, overall, than people who commuted to work.
“If I don’t go out all week because I’m at home working, then I want to do something during the weekend,” Cirillo said. In the United States, she said, that means “you get in your car and you do whatever.”
The region’s commutes range from easy jaunts to harrowing long hauls, their effects felt in different ways. Much comes down to where people live and how they choose to get around.
On a recent day, a self-described germaphobe sat on a piece of plastic and donned a mask for a quick trip on Metro’s Green Line from the Naylor Road station, just outside D.C. in Prince George’s County, Md., to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center downtown. Meanwhile, a hospital worker grumbled about her traffic-snarled 54-minute drive from Largo, farther out in Prince George’s, to the same spot.
Commuting decisions are often shaped by economic concerns, job requirements, family responsibilities, regional development patterns and transportation policies. Prolonged construction projects — from Florida Avenue NW in the District to the George Washington Memorial Parkway in Virginia — stymie commuters, as do disruptions to transit services. Less predictable disturbances also drag out travel.
Earlier this week, that included a panhandler standing in a travel lane on North Capitol Street and, across town, a motorcade that complicated banker Damian Tabor’s commute through Georgetown, where he drops off his girlfriend each morning on his roundabout trip from Southeast Washington to his job downtown.
“It’s always eventful,” said Tabor, 26. “It’s always something.”
While highways have faced more cars in some places and crowding at new times, transit and rail systems are wrestling with the opposite problem: disuse.
Until a recent rise in ridership, nearly half of Metrorail’s riders had been lost to telework, the transit agency has said, contributing to a gaping hole in its operational budget. Transit agencies across the country have faced similar ridership drops.
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Ridership in MARC trains, which carry passengers mainly from suburban Maryland to downtown D.C., is about 40 percent of pre-pandemic levels.
“It continues to kind of creep up,” said Maryland Transit Administration Administrator Holly Arnold, adding that it could be years before ridership returns to earlier numbers.
The Virginia Railway Express is averaging about 6,400 riders daily, roughly one-third of pre-pandemic levels. VRE data shows no significant month-over-month improvement this year, even as the agency waived Friday fares this summer.
The summer and fall have brought a glint of hope to Union Station, the city’s busiest transit hub, which was largely abandoned when the pandemic struck. Metro historically has been the largest rail operator at Union Station, while its Metro station typically is the busiest in the transit system.
In July, Metrorail ridership to and from Union Station reached 325,410 trips, up 30 percent from the previous year. But Metro ridership at the transit hub was still less than half what it was before the pandemic.
“You can see and feel the activity picking up at the station,” said Doug Carr, chief executive of the Union Station Redevelopment Corp., which oversees the facility. We “feel like we’ve turned a corner, but we still think there is definitely a long way to go.”
Metro has also seen positive signs in its systemwide numbers. The highest daily ridership of the pandemic era occurred Wednesday, with 446,000 trips — more than 65 percent of the average number of weekday rides in September 2019. That has coincided with increasing pressures on employees to return to offices, but also reflects Metro’s move this month to restore rail frequencies to their highest levels in history.
The trends at Metro follow a pattern seen in other systems across the country: Transit use is heaviest during the middle of the week. That midweek bump has prompted bus and rail systems to schedule more service on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays.
On Metrobus, ridership is continuing to hold steady at about 90 percent of pre-pandemic levels. Bus ridership is less reliant on office commuters, experts say, and passengers often have fewer transportation options.
Officials say the single biggest factor that could change commutes in the region would be the return of large numbers of federal workers to their offices. Regional leaders are lobbying federal agencies and the White House to increase the number of office work days required of federal workers, a move they hope would translate into a financial boost for local business districts and the Metro system.
Last month, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments sent a letter — signed by 23 city or county administrators in the region — to the Office of Management and Budget, saying it supported the federal government’s desire to substantially increase office attendance. The letter indicated that transportation services created with federal workers in mind, such as commuter rail and Metro, are facing challenges without a steady, predictable stream of passengers.
The Biden administration directed agencies in the spring to develop plans for a return and again urged workers over the summer to come back this fall. But progress has been halting, with unions that represent many rank-and-file federal workers demanding a say in the changes.
Agency leaders have more discretion over the schedules of managers, issuing directives, in some cases, for them to be in the office several days each two-week pay period this fall. At the Department of Education, for example, supervisors will be required to spend four days every two weeks in the office beginning in November, with schedules for unionized employees to be determined in the future.
While the White House has said getting workers into offices is a priority, agencies say they also see value in continuing to offer flexible working arrangements. A National Aeronautics and Space Administration official told a House committee this month that remote work allows NASA to stay competitive in the job market.
At the same hearing, a Department of Homeland Security official said employees continue to express how they value flexibility, pointing to minimized commutes as one benefit.
The fate of federal return-to-office requirements also will influence the private sector.
“They’re certainly the standard-bearer in the District,” said Jeff Wheeler, 30, a program officer for an international nonprofit based in D.C., who lives in Northeast and said he takes Metro to work because it’s faster, cheaper and better for the environment than driving. He’s required to be in the office three days a week, an arrangement negotiated by his union. Wheeler said he believes companies are feeling emboldened to claw back work flexibility as federal workers are pressured into commuting more regularly.
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Aleem Datoo, 27, who works as a project coordinator for a D.C. labor rights organization, said his employer requires workers to come in on three predetermined days each week, leaving little flexibility. He said the policy, coupled with the time and cost of commuting, is more of a burden for employees than managers realize.
Gas prices are elevated, rising 10.6 percent in August compared with a month earlier. Metro raised its fares for the first time in five years, one of several transit agencies seeking to replace revenue lost to telework.
While Metro estimates fares have gone up about 3 percent for the average ride, the new structure affects long-distance commuters, such as Datoo, the most.
Datoo’s 75-minute commute between his D.C. office and his home in the Silver Spring area costs $5 each way. Before the price hike, he said, he could find ways to reduce travel costs by coming into the office later or leaving the office after rush hour to avoid peak charges. But the new fare structure levies the same fare at most times.
“The thing that kind of frustrates me is that it was really expensive to ride the Metro, and over the last two months they made it more expensive,” Datoo said. “It is now practically cheaper for me and my family to drive down rather than use the Metro, which is really ridiculous.”
Datoo said it costs him $13 a day to park downtown, just $3 more than a Metro commute that’s longer than a car ride.
Then again, depending on where you’re going, getting behind the wheel has also become increasingly unpleasant.
In August, for example, the timing of the Washington region’s rush-hour commute was more spread out than in 2019, according to INRIX.
Pre-pandemic traffic levels showed two peak periods that towered over the rest of the day: one in the 7 a.m. hour and another about 4 p.m. The peaks are still there, according to the company’s data, but the timing of when many drivers are commuting appears to have changed. The peak of the morning rush has shifted later and is less pronounced, with traffic volumes ebbing more gradually into midmorning. In the afternoon, traffic builds to a crescendo rather than arriving in a quick surge.
Vehicle trips into downtown D.C. in May were about 24 percent below 2019 levels, according to the most recent INRIX data available, a shift repeated across several major cities the company analyzed. Downtown San Francisco took the biggest hit, seeing a 41 percent drop in trips to the city’s core.
How the evolving D.C. commute is translating into highway vehicle speeds — often a proxy to measure congestion — is mixed, according INRIX’s analysis.
In August, speeds on Interstates 295 and 695 straddling the Anacostia River generally were a few miles per hour faster throughout the day than in 2019, slowing during rush hour. In the afternoon, average speeds dropped near levels seen before the pandemic.
On the Beltway, INRIX data suggests there is little difference in average speeds for much of the day, with August’s traffic patterns nearly identical to those before the pandemic. Speeds dip about 8 a.m., reflecting the busy morning rush, then recover during the day before dipping again around 4 p.m. and 5 p.m.
Maryland Department of Transportation data points to a similar picture on key Washington-area highways.
On the Beltway in the Lanham area of Prince George’s, overall weekday traffic volumes are down about 7 percent compared with 2019, according to the data. The decline is, in large part, the result of a quieter morning commute. But at 5 p.m., there’s almost no difference.
On a stretch of Interstate 270 south of Germantown, weekday vehicle counts are slightly higher at 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. than in 2019, despite a 4 percent drop in overall traffic numbers on the stretch.
Congestion has been good news for at least one group: toll operators.
Traffic levels in toll lanes along Interstate 95 have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and average tolls are higher, an indication drivers are paying their way out of congestion. Toll rates fluctuate to maintain an average minimum speed, generally 55 mph.
Financial reports from operator Transurban tout growth at its North America toll roads, which include express lanes on Interstates 95, 395 and 495 in Northern Virginia. In the fiscal year that ended June 30, Transurban reported a 13 percent increase in traffic and a 22 percent jump in toll revenue, to $232 million.
In the I-95/I-395 corridor, from Stafford County to the 14th Street Bridge, an average of 65,900 vehicles used express lanes daily this past summer, according to Transurban, up from about 60,100 in the fourth quarter of 2022. The average toll was $10.60 in June, about $1.34 more than a year earlier.
According to the company, it was “the highest ever full year” of average daily traffic with “strong workday traffic” and “increased congestion.” Ellen Kamilakis, a Virginia Department of Transportation spokeswoman, said, “Generally speaking, we can say that traffic patterns have reached to a new normal, post-pandemic.”
Back in Maryland, Taylor’s commute brings her along Central Avenue in Prince George’s, then into the District through Capitol Hill, where she encounters multiple “choke points.”
She is careful not to schedule meetings before 9:30 a.m. to give herself a commuting buffer. As Taylor slogs through traffic, she reminds herself she’s only making the drive two or three times a week. Still, the less frequent trip stresses her out.
“It’s been getting increasingly more difficult,” she said. “It’s a grind.”
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