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ATANTA—Employee commuting habits, telecommuting frequency and use of public transportation in the weeks following the March 30 fire and subsequent collapse of an overpass on Interstate 85 in Atlanta is under review. Repairs by the Georgia Department of Transportation took seven weeks, forcing the more than 1,400 CBRE employees in the Atlanta metro region to adapt quickly.

“Residents in the Atlanta area are accustomed to traffic congestion and unpredictable traffic patterns, but the I-85 bridge collapse was a new challenge for us all,” Brian Reed, CBRE southeast research manager, tells GlobeSt.com. “We are glad CBRE, as well as other metro Atlanta companies, offered solutions to our city’s employees, such as telecommuting or more flexibility on the standard work hours, to offset the inconveniences of longer commuting times.”

The report addresses three categories impacted by the collapse of the Interstate 85 overpass. Those areas are: commuter impacts, logistics and corporate real estate.

While there is an increasing appetite for alternative transportation, the real winners here are firms that have adopted telecommuting, which helped reduce the economic impact of the event by more than 25%. Morning commute times, for those who traveled to the office, were most negatively impacted, increasing commute times by an average of 52 minutes.

(Who will win in transit-oriented development trends? Check out one view.)

For employees with the ability to telecommute, 27% were able to increase the frequency of telecommuting. Also, about 9% of employees used the situation as a reason to commute, or increase the frequency of commuting, via the Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA).

Atlanta logistics experienced a moderate impact due to the Interstate 85 overpass collapse. Alternative interstates allowed local and long-haul trucking to detour efficiently. For large-scale distribution users, this section of Interstate 85 is less valuable than the Perimeter (Interstate 285).

Increased frequency of telecommuting allowed for employees to continue business without loss of time due to longer commutes. Although it is difficult to measure, one of the most important components of a region’s success is its ability to support a high quality of life.

With Atlanta’s reputation for challenging traffic, which is ranked as the fourth worst in the country by INRIX, the collapse did result in even more time lost to traffic congestion, diminishing the quality of life for the region’s 5.8 million people. The most important lesson we can learn is that infrastructure plays an important role that should not be taken for granted.