Getting around a congested city is probably way faster than using a car. It's called CityAirbus for a reason ;-)
Then again, it's an individual solution to a societal problem. I would prefer a solution for the masses, like getting rid of cars in cities and improving public transport.
WFH is the best solution. You get a better distribution of people across a whole region thus solving the traffic problem. It won't even be needed to invest in public transportation networks anymore.
No it is not. You get to replace the social parts of the job too, and pay for the place to be prepared for the job, if at all possible.
WFH really means convert your room into an office or rent a coworking space. Is anyone paid extra for that? Nope!
And it's really not for everyone either, you cannot get interactive with coworkers in the same way.
Never thought of the social aspects. I am married with kids and have a strong social cricle. I guess it's harder for the people that are missing those.
As to converting the room into an office, I think everyone that works with a computer has a desk and a chair at home. You just need to put the company machine on it.
Real estate in places close to work is already so expensive that with anything further you can easily afford a whole additional room.
As for the social aspect - to the degree it's possible at work you can cultivate that online and during occasional get-togethers. It's not worth the time waste and environmental destruction associated with commuting.
How long before noise complaints cause the CityAirbus to be restricted to narrow lanes above highways that will be just as congested as the highway below?
But some people do not want to be part of "the masses", they want to fly around in flying taxis because they think they're better than everybody else. That's why companies like these exist (and hopefully fail).
Trains in Berlin's public transport go up to 90km/h and don't wait at traffic lights. I bet there's plenty cities with faster public transport, but probably few that can provide near perfect last-mile coverage in the entire metro area. If you want to go fast especially during rush hour, that's an option.
Whenever I've tried picking two random points in Berlin on Google Maps, averaged over all the point pairs I chose, public transportation takes an average of about 50 minutes regardless of physical distance.
If both ends happen to be right by the same line then you can do better, of course — connections and stop distributions are what drag things back to that value.
My old apartment and employer were 8 km apart*, Google says 48 minutes by public transit, 28 minutes by car, 30 minutes cycling, for average speeds of 10/17/16 km/h respectively.
Public transport has a huge cost advantage, it lets me learn the language during my commute, and it's a huge space saver relative to personal cars, but it's nowhere near as fast as you'd expect from the peak speed.
Then again, it's an individual solution to a societal problem. I would prefer a solution for the masses, like getting rid of cars in cities and improving public transport.