Fewer people are commuting to Center City, new report says

A new report on traffic patterns in major U.S. cities shows that downtown areas still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic commuter volumes. Philadelphia is no exception, but it falls somewhere in the middle compared to other metropolitan areas.

On Tuesday, INRIX — a company that aggregates data from GPS to measure traffic patterns — released its latest report on how commuter patterns have changed since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. INRIX said it used trip analytic data collected from over 300 million vehicles and drivers to analyze traffic patterns since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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“One of the major questions since COVID-19 has been ‘what is happening downtown?’” said Bob Pishue, the INRIX lead transportation analyst who coauthored the report. “In short, we drew a box around cities’ downtowns and looked at if people are coming in and out of that box as much as they were pre-COVID.”

The data show that most major metropolitan downtowns are still below their pre-COVID level of vehicular trips. Experts say this creates a trickle-down effect, impacting local businesses, office buildings, and tax collections.

In Philly, downtown traffic has slowed substantially since the beginning of the pandemic. According to INRIX, vehicular trips downtown decreased by 21% since 2019. Chicago, Portland, and D.C. experienced similar downticks. New York experienced a decrease of only 4%. Phoenix saw an increase of 6% and San Francisco saw the largest decrease of the 22 cities measured — 41%.

“Philadelphia is sort of in the middle of all the downtowns we’ve looked at,” Pishue said. “There’s a fairly significant decrease in trips, but it’s not as much as, say, Seattle or Baltimore.”

» READ MORE: Center City’s jobs, retail, and tourism are recovering — but not everything is at pre-pandemic levels yet

Across the country, transit ridership percentages continue to lag compared to pre-COVID levels. In Philly, transit ridership decreased by 42%, according to INRIX. Pishue said the study analyzed ridership from any local public transit agency serving urbanized areas.

By the end of 2022, local ridership was up 2% compared to pre-pandemic levels.

Other standout statistics from the report:

According to INRIX, downtown areas that hold a high share of jobs based in the area — especially jobs in the finance industry — saw significant shifts in who’s working from home, going downtown, and how often they’re commuting.

Like the other trends, the impact in Philadelphia typically fell somewhere in the middle compared to other major cities — with fewer changes than D.C. and San Francisco, but more than Detroit and Houston.

» READ MORE: Philly-area workers prefer to work from home, leaving millions of square feet of office space vacant

This data tracks with other studies conducted on shifts in where people live and work since the onset of the pandemic. A Census Bureau American Community Survey analysis conducted by the New York Times earlier this year revealed that major cities saw an influx in remote workers, but a loss in remote-working residents as workers took advantage of the ability to work from anywhere.

In Philadelphia, many offices are sitting empty. In a recent analysis, real estate services company JLL reported a 17.3% vacancy rate in Philadelphia and 20.6% in the suburbs.

Some offices — like Comcast, one of the city’s largest employers and often a tone-setter within the business community — are beginning to require employees to come into the office more often.

» READ MORE: More Philly office workers will come back in-person on multiple days, downtown boosters predict

Comcast announced employees will be required to report to the office four days per week instead of three starting in the fall. A SEPTA spokesperson said the company looked forward to serving the potential uptick in commuters.

“I think that as downtown continues to come back, we should expect some of those transit rider numbers to come back,” INRIX’s Pishue said.

Restaurateurs hope this will also lead to a resurgence in lunch service.

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the dining industry, with a 22% decline as of this year in Philadelphia lunch services compared to 2019, according to a recent report.

A pizzeria owner within the Comcast building said the in-office requirement increase will help his bottom line.

» READ MORE: Comcast will soon require most workers to be in the office 4 days a week