'Worse than ever,' Boston's biotechs stare down traf­fic cri­sis — prompt­ing call for more re­mote work­ing, flex hours

They’d been warned be­fore. Now it might start cost­ing them em­ploy­ees.

The Mass­a­chu­sets Biotech­nol­o­gy Coun­cil (Mass­Bio) re­leased their lat­est com­mute sur­vey and found “we are in fact at a tip­ping point:” 60% of re­spon­dents would con­sid­er chang­ing jobs for an eas­i­er com­mute, a near­ly iden­ti­cal num­ber say things are get­ting worse and it seems just about every­one (90%) who took the MB­TA metro be­came “stressed, an­gry, or frus­trat­ed.”

“In Mass­a­chu­sets, traf­fic con­ges­tion and fail­ures in trans­porta­tion sys­tem are get­ting worse than ever, and our em­ploy­ees are start­ing to make de­ci­sions around their com­mute,”  Mass­Bio VP of glob­al af­fairs Eliz­a­beth Steele told End­points News. Her com­mute from with­in Boston to Kendall Square takes 40 min­utes dur­ing off-hours.

The re­port prompt­ed a memo from Mass­Bio chief Robert Cough­lin call­ing for com­pa­nies to for­mal­ly al­low em­ploy­ees to work from home once-a-week and in­sti­tute flex­i­ble work hours in an ef­fort to curb frus­tra­tion.  The email called the traf­fic sit­u­a­tion a “cri­sis” at a “break­ing point” and called the re­port’s find­ings “grim, but not sur­pris­ing.”

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