Heading back to the workplace? NJ Transit wants to know so it can plan service.

NJ Transit is conducting a fourth survey about commuters returning to the workplace and how they intend to travel so the agency can plan service, as ridership is steadily continues to increase.

The survey is being conducted as NJ Transit officials continued to report ridership increases as more employees who worked from home during the coronavirus pandemic are returning to offices.

Rail officials reported on June 23 that weekday ridership was around 40% of pre-pandemic levels and higher on weekends at 50% with select lines hitting 60% and 70% of pre-pandemic levels.

Bus ridership is averaging 55% of pre-covid levels and New York ridership picked up to 40% to 45% of pre-pandemic levels. Light rail ridership was at 50% of pre-coronavirus levels, officials said.

Response to the last two surveys has gotten as high as 54,000 responses, the last one in April had over 50,000 online responses over 10 days, officials said. This current survey helps the agency prepare for commuting patterns as regional economies reopen from COVID-19 restrictions. This online survey is offered in English and in Spanish.

If you fill it out, you can win a $500 gift card. But there are other reasons to take it.

The past surveys have provided information about who is riding, where they’re going, when they travel and if their employer has provided guidance about when employees will return to the workplace – all which has given information to NJ Transit to plan service. They’ve also told the agency how well riders are doing on mask compliance, based on passenger’s observations.

Here’s what to expect. The survey asks about how riders traveled before the March 2020 peak of the pandemic, which includes whether passengers rode commuter buses run by private carriers, such as Academy, DeCamp, Lakeland or Coach USA.

Questions include the route regularly ridden and the purpose of the trip, whether for work, recreation, school or other reasons, the state and zip code of the destination and how often that trip was made

It asks about how your traveling now and if it’s by the same mode of transit. For people who’ve taken past surveys, there are questions they’ve seen before about cleanliness of stations and vehicles, ease or difficulty of social distancing and how well other passengers are complying with mask requirements.

There are also forward looking questions to help plan service, such when people expect to return to the workplace, whether they’ll work a hybrid work schedule or not, and the times they expect to travel to and from the workplace and riders thoughts about COVID related issues.

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Larry Higgs may be reached at [email protected].