Fully In-Person Work Returned to Pre-Pandemic Levels

• 66% of Maryland workers had fully in-person schedules, similar to 2019.
• 20% of workers had hybrid schedules; 14% were fully remote.
• Hybrid workers had the highest average education and income levels.
• More than half of fully in-person workers would have preferred to more telecommuting.

Hybrid Workers Had an Outsized Impact on Rail Transit

• Hybrid workers disproportionately commuted by rail modes and commuted most often in the middle of the work week, leading to measurably higher rail demand on these days.
• Transit mode share remained relatively low. Eleven percent (11%) of commutes were by bus or rail transit, 69% were by auto modes, and 17% were by telecommuting.

Commute Distances Increased

• Commutes were measurably longer in 2023 than in 2022. This may have been due, in-part, to workers who previously worked remotely shifting to hybrid or in-person schedules, consistent with the decrease of fully remote workers since 2022 and the tendency for remote workers to live farther than in-person workers from their employers.
• Longer commutes reduced the feasibility of active and transit modes, with implications for transit ridership, VMT, and carbon emissions.

Workers Were Satisfied with Maryland Transportation Systems

• Workers tended to be satisfied with MDOT, but there was room for improvement.
• Urban and suburban workers were more satisfied than rural ones. This coordinated with higher satisfaction among workers of color.
• Workers felt that transportation did not limit their job opportunities and that they could use transit as much as they wanted to.