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The thing is there won't necessarily be an overnight change in working patterns. Following favourable experiences during the Covid crisis many who have experienced working from home will want to keep it that way, or at least work at home a large proportion of the time. Some, however, would prefer to working an office most of the time and, of course, some jobs can't be done at home. Companies have also seen an opportunity to cut costs by having to pay for less office space, and remote working also broadens their recruitment catchment area. I know of a software developer working for a London company who was based in Edinburgh and just needed to attend a face-to-face meeting once a fortnight in London - that could presumably be replaced with a to conference for most meetings. (To be honest I knew of many IT staff working remotely before lockdown, just quoting one example.)The office space no longer required for working could be used for accommodation and hotels - that has been done already in some places. Similar, any reduction in vehicle traffic will be a gradual change as it will require more convenient and cost effective public transport to fit in with new working patterns. Brexit  will also have an effect as some finance companies have moved jobs from London into EU financial centres, which will reduce the importance of London over a periodic time - particularly if the EU doesnt grant equivalence for financial services or data protection.Although Covid produced some overnight changes in working and traffic patterns some may prove to be temporary until longer term benefits have been considered. However, I'm not sure how mush working from home longer term will affect vehicle traffic as most office workers can't commute by car to London as they have no where to park. Outside of London there might be more scope to change commuting habits by providing more convenient public transport and taxiing company car parking facilities? Just some thoughts ...

Michael Ixer ● 1969d

Oh, Richard, please!!!Are you calling for complete eradication of motor vehicles? Of course not, you have said so many times before!  I believe motor vehicles use should be reduced but I do not believe in banning them altogether for many reasons.  What I have questioned were the LTNs, introduced rather draconianly.  In the West Putney LTN, for example, people who lived on the south end of the road could not reach the north end of the road and had to use URR and Roehampton Lane to reach each end.  That is not a very clever idea.  The so-called rat run on DHR was officially transferred to side roads which are much narrower than DHR.  And the new rat-run just happened to be used by local residents.Also, Putney is at the end of the A3, the M4 and the M3 slightly further afield.  Put all this traffic plus misplaced local traffic and you get the results of the analysis - increased pollution - something I thought you were very much against.As I mentioned to Matt on another thread, the problem in London is that all motor vehicles here do not originate their trips in London. The tailback on the M4 last Tuesday at 9.00am-ish proves the point.In the case of the A3, part of the traffic goes down Putney Hill and the other down West Hill.  At the end of the day, they do the same route to reach the A3 to take them out of town.So, not all traffic in Putney originates from Putney.  How do you deal with that?But pollution certainly increased on the available roads.  Just as it increased on KHS with the introduction of the cycle lane, reducing motor vehicles to one lane each way and the results were there - pollution increased substantially!

Ivonne Holliday ● 1969d