Chicago is easing its limitations on staying at home this June. Businesses are starting to open again, allowing employees back into the office. Restaurants and bars are inviting people to their patios for socially distanced dining. And intimate spaces, like CTA buses and trains, are being filled, once again, with people. While we are entitled to stretch our legs after a long few weeks at home, caution should still be advised. You should, in fact, consult Crain’s Chicago Business on whether or not public transportation is safe at all. Wearing a mask in public, practicing social distancing, and avoiding hand-to-hand contact are all really important, but the problem is that many of these things are unavoidable as we head back into the workforce. One solution to this issue would be to stagger start times for employees so people going back to work don’t clog up the roads with traffic, crowd building lobbies, or overflow parking garages. Here are a few reasons why this might work.
Though our intricate system of trains and buses that takes passengers all over Chicago is up and running, the city is encouraging people to reduce their travel by CTA as much as possible. The problem is that, as businesses start opening up their offices and allowing employees to come back to work, people will see work as essential travel. While some may use this as an excuse to take public transportation, those worried about gathering alongside masses of people again, mask or not, will opt to travel on the roads to avoid contact as much as possible. Regardless of which transportation method you prefer, road congestion will flare significantly as people get back to their regular 9-5 jobs in the office. If you stagger which days employees come into work and when they work from home, our roads will see less traffic, spaced out over the course of the week, instead of clogged highways at certain times of day.
Even if the CTA doesn’t see full capacity, building lobbies almost certainly will. Chicago is made up of massive skyscrapers, filled with offices that house thousands of employees. If we allow every employee to start again at their usual 9 am, building lobbies will be a hotspot for the virus to thrive, as crowds of people rush through and pack into elevators. Staggering start times for your employees by allowing some to take morning or afternoon shifts, and spacing out which days they come into the office and when they work from home, will help you take precautions in your business to ensure people are socially distanced and, therefore, safe at work.
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Parking is already an issue in Chicago, as most of us know. It’s too hard to find street parking, so the safest and most reliable option is to find a parking garage with affordable rates. However, as people start coming back to work all at the same time, it’s clear that parking garages will fill up rather quickly. As road congestion increases, and CTA travel decreases, many people will be unable to find parking at all, leaving them stressed about getting to work on time. This is another reason to stagger start times: to ensure that it’s far easier to find parking as traffic on the roads is bound to increase. Currently, InterPark garages are offering their morning special all day at participating locations through the iParkit app! Download today to snag that sweet deal.
So, what is your business doing as employees come back to work? Are you staggering start times? Are you allowing work-from-home days? Let us know your strategy in the comments below!
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