Why working from home part-time makes traffic congestion worse

Working from home won’t solve Melbourne’s road congestion woes, the boss of Infrastructure Victoria has warned.

About a third of Victoria’s workforce can work from home and most indicate they intend to continue to work remotely between one to three days per week.

The trend is expected to make traffic congestion “a few percentage points worse” than it was pre-pandemic.

“Working from home doesn’t solve congestion,” Acting CEO of Infrastructure Victoria, Jonathan Spear, told Neil Mitchell.

“While there’s less congestion in inner Melbourne, what we find is that because people generally choose to live further away from the city, on those days that they do travel into the city for work, then there are longer journeys and more congestion on the roads further out on the freeways coming into the city and a bit more crowding on our trains,” he said.

Press PLAY below to hear how working from home part-time can mean worse traffic jams