Five days in the office: a backtrack?

However. Therefore, five years later, the government of Doug Ford wanted to impose a return to face -down work five days a week in Ontario. Nevertheless, In the name of efficiency, productivity, revival of city centers. Moreover, We hope to revive the local cafes, the restaurants of the South. For example, We invoke the economy as if it could only exist in its prepaandemic version.

We now know that teleworking is not a perfect model. In addition, He still has his place in the world of work. Moreover, but he has also shown his limits: isolation, loss of social ties, management difficulty for employers, blurred borders between professional and personal life. Nevertheless, Above all, teleworking did not make movements disappear. Therefore, He only transformed them.

As Patrick Robert-Meunier explains. Therefore, co-director of Mobi-O in Gatineau, telework five days office: backtrack? has encouraged many people to move to the outskirts, fishing, Wakefield or Val-des-Monts. Additionally, Therefore, To the point where some villages no longer even had the ability to welcome more people! Moreover, Result: less daily turnipage to the office. Similarly, yes, but longer and more frequent trips to do something else: grocery store, leisure, visit friends. “The work, recalls Mr. Robert-Meunier is 50 % of trips. The rest is quite different trip. ” In short, the number of kilometers traveled did not necessarily drop. And neither does congestion …

Repeat the mistakes of the past – Five days office: backtrack?

The fact remains that to impose a return to work five days a week without planning. without supporting public transport and without a extensive reflection on sustainable mobility, is to repeat the errors of the past. “An ill-planned return can cause overload of public transport, traffic jams, and discourage users,” five days office: backtrack? explains Patrick Robert-Meunier.

As Myriam Nadeau. Director General points out of the network of mobility expertise centers, we cannot think of returning to the office without considering travel management plans. Governments must act as responsible employers and implement concrete measures so that this change is attractive and accessible. How? “By offering carpooling parking lots, secure bicycle supports, showers for cyclists …”, she says.

Madame Nadeau goes further by arguing that sustainable mobility should not be limited to home-work. It can also support the local economy. “Cyclists,” she says, spend more five days office: backtrack? in neighborhood shops than motorists because they stop more easily. ” You have to think of sustainable transport differently: not as a constraint, but as an economic lever.

Federal?

If the federal government was to follow suit in Ontario. in turn demand a return to face to work five days a week, the Outaouais transport company would be ready to welcome a greater number of passengers, assures its president, Jocelyn Blondin.

He recalls that an increase of 5 % of the service is already planned this fall. that the recruitment of drivers is advancing well. “The return to five days would not change customers,” he notes, “but would distribute travel differently during the week. The STO could therefore strengthen the existing offer without having to create new lines ”.

This is reassuring. But insufficient. It will also take concrete incentives, flexible five days office: backtrack? schedules, in mass return to face -to -face work. It will take a vision. The return to old ways of doing things should not be a simple step back.