BUFFALO, N.Y. — You probably know the feeling of getting stuck in traffic and waiting as cars slowly work their way forward.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lot of that eased up, but even though things have shifted mostly back to normal it has long-term impacts.

“We're here 24/7, monitoring about 170 cameras,” said Athena Hutchins, the executive director of NITTEC.

The eyes in the skies at the Niagara International Transportation Technology Coalition, or NITTEC, take in a lot of info.

“Anything happening on the roadways, we're monitoring it,” said Hutchins.

Based in Buffalo, traffic isn’t a huge issue.

“There's a joke: it's a 20-minute commute city,” Hutchins added.

Since the pandemic, they’ve seen shifts.

“Tuesday, Wednesday [and] Thursday are definitely busier days,” she said.

“[This graph] shows that sharp peak between the 4 to 6 p.m. hours pre-COVID,” added Mike Davis, the principal transportation analyst for the Greater Buffalo Niagara Regional Transportation Council. “Now, you're seeing that that volume, that peak volume, is just as great as it was pre-COVID, but it's spread out throughout more hours.”

It reflects the numbers from a recent study by CoworkingCafe.

“Workers are still commuting. They're just doing it differently,” said Andreea Neculae, a creative writer at CoworkingCafe.

She broke down the numbers across the country.

“There's 5% less time spent in traffic between 2023 and 2019,” Neculae added. “It might not seem like a lot, but every minute during a commute matters.”

Overall, New York saw a 9% decrease in congestion from 2019 to 2023, but things like infrastructure, tourism, and manufacturing all changed the size of that impact.

“Not all cities are created equally, so to say,” explained Neculae.

In Buffalo, there was a 161% increase in work-from-home rates between 2019 and 2023. That only led to a 13% decrease in congestion.

In Syracuse, an 81% work from home increase actually saw a 10% jump in congestion.

Albany’s 31% work-from-home increase led to a 25% drop in congestion.

Rochester’s whopping 184% increase in work-from-home didn’t have any impact on congestion.

“Remote workers are kind of the base building block that keep congestion down,” Neculae said. “But for that, you also need pillars to support that.”

Over at NITTEC, they’re using grants to analyze the spread of the traditional “rush hour.”

They’re figuring out if things like ramp metering, variable speed limits and smart signals might ease the burden along main arteries and side routes.

“The 190 corridor […] has the Niagara Street corridor as the parallel arterial route,” said Davis.

“If there's an incident on the 190, it's got the speed data from all the arterials around the region,” Hutchins explained. “You can extend the green time, so you give it more green to go north or south to flush the traffic.”

As projects like these continue throughout the region and state, the idea is to tackle traffic as patterns evolve.

“We're able to really pinpoint what would be best to implement into the system and for agencies to invest in in the future,” said Davis.

The spreading of commute times not only means less stress on the roads, but also potentially fewer emissions.

NITTEC notes popular usage of map apps helps people avoid backups, but it’s always good to know alternate routes for your common commutes.