The Impact of COVID-19 on the Choice of Transport Means in Journeys to Work Based on the Selected Example from Poland

Remark

Answer

Reviewer 1

1

The paper has a lot of grammatical error that must be checked prior to a resubmission.

We corrected grammar and spell.

2

There are some statements that are vague. The following are some examples

We explain these in detail in rows 3 – 8.

3

Page 2 "PhD students were omitted in further analyzes (sic) as a group with specific conditions (similar to those of lower-level students." What are these specific conditions?

PhD students are not typical teachers (however realize some courses as teachers). The number of such courses is not large. Next, they participate in specific courses as students. Summarised, the typical “day of PhD student” is not so long as an employee (and student too). PhD visit WUST not alldays. They live near the school (as the tenant). They have no family (partner, child). For these reasons, they are not considered in the survey of employees.

We add the commentary like above in the revised text (rows 78-84).

4

"Page 2, line 90: "...by consideration of other pandemic conditions". What are "other pandemic conditions?"

Masks, limits on public transport.

See also the explanation to point 10.

We add the commentary like above in the revised text (rows 93-96).

5

Page 3, line 103: "...only 16 ATU with significant numbers  of journeys." How many journeys are considered "significant numbers of journeys"?

Significant numbers are higher than 3.

We add the commentary like above in the revised text (rows 109-112).

6

Page 6: The authors state "...employees switch on average from about 17.7% of public transport to individual transport.." and "...but is still lower than before the pandemic by about 7.2%". It is not clear to me how these numbers were calculated.

The values: 17.7% and 7.2% are averages from all ATU data sets.

We add a new row in table 3 that represents these values for all ATU. 

7

Page 7, line 149: "...the choice of means of transport shaped over the years due to psychological conditions..." What are these psychological conditions?

We changed this sentence to the form:

(...) the choice of means of transport was predominantly shaped by factors such as satisfaction, experience, pricing, emissions, distances and land use.

We add the commentary like above in the revised text (rows 175-177).

8

The authors conclude that "...means in journeys to work are decreased comparing a stage before and during the pandemic". It is not clear why this decrease happened or what the authors are trying to hypothesize why the decrease happened. 

According to the description in this table and to the changes in the manuscript we reformulated the sentences in section 5: conclusions (see the rows 189-208).

Remark

Answer

Reviewer 2

1

The article is part of the recently widespread research on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on various aspects of the functioning of everyday life, including, for example, commuting.
I believe that any work to increase knowledge in this area is important, the more so that in the context of the development of the pandemic, we had to deal with different attitudes of society and public authorities to the issue of mobility, including the use of public transport.

We thank You for this comment.

2

The article is relatively short and after the first review it aroused some concern among the reviewer. The work concerns the analysis of a questionnaire survey among employees of one of the universities in Wrocław, Poland. This is not an objection, but it should be emphasized that research and teaching workers are a special social group characterized by, for example, irregular working hours. In addition, the study was performed in July 2021 - why were the studies not performed cyclically? What phase of the pandemic was Poland in July 2021. There is not a sufficient answer to this question in the article.

The survey was a part of broader works named “mobility plan”. These works started in late spring 2021 (not ended yet) and were not planned cyclically. We ask the surveyors from the end days of June and to the first days of July. This is in fact no vacation. In this period a part of the restriction was canceled (telework) and other are leaved (masks, limits on public transport).

We add the commentary like above in the revised text (rows 62-67).

3

Below are the main problems that I identified after reading the article.

We explain these in detail in rows 12 – 14.

4

1. The article does not exhaust the available literature, both Polish and foreign, in which numerous articles on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the movement of people were published. I know at least a dozen other works from Poland that should be cited. I assess the literature review very critically and as completely insufficient. The literature has not been carefully reviewed, the available sources have not been assessed, and it has not been proven that there is a research gap that should be filled in the reviewed article. This article item must be re-prepared.

Our goals were not to compare the existed studies connected with Covid-19 (in fact, there are a lot of sources). We would show a simple case study and the results of the specific survey. However, we add some new sources, important and representative (in our opinion) to show in the paper. These are 20 new references described in the text and commented on in the discussion and conclusions.

5

2. The article insufficiently presents the context of the development of the Covid-19 pandemic in Poland. Each country had its own pandemic development dynamics. The survey was carried out in July, when some university employees go on holidays. Why was the study done at this time when the incidence of covid-19 was probably not high, and the residents of Wrocław might not remember their communication behavior. The description of the covid-19 background study should be expanded.

See the explanations to point 10.

6

3. The article requires careful review, especially in terms of the English language and editing.

We corrected grammar and spell.