Transit Tom wants to know how you get where you're going.

It's worth $50,000 to him and he'll start spending the money next Monday by sending out questionnaires which will eventually reach half of Winnipeg's 118,000 households.

Kenn Rosin, transportation planning engineeer for the City of Winnipeg, said yesterday the city is looking for information which will enable it to plan for the future needs of both motorists and transit riders.

Transit surveys have most recenltly been conducted here in 1976, 1971 and 1962, but trends from which future projections can be made change rapidly enough to warrant this month's study, he said.

The one-page, 12-question survey will first of all ask the respondent to identify which of the city's 150 traffic zones he or she lives in. "We'd like your address, your postal code or at least the area in which you live so we can tell origin and destination of the trips you make around town," Rosin said.

He said other survey questions will determine how many cars are available to the members of a particular household, what type of occupation family members pursue and how many males and females live in a home.

"The final group of questions asks where you go each day, what time of day you travel, whether you take a car or the bus and, if you go by car or car pool, whether you need your car during the time you're working."

Responding to the survey should only take a few minutes, the official said. Forms will be mailed back to the city in postage-paid envelopes.

Rosin said he expects between 30,000 and 35,000 Winnipeggers to respond. It will take abot a year for usable information to emerge from a computer-assisted evaluation, he added.

Some future developments which could result from the survey include exclusive busways — new thoroughfares built for the sole use of buses, a partial return to trolley service, different kinds and sizes of diesel buses and something Rosin refers to as a hybrid transit vehicle.

"It's a bus using a rapidly rotating flywheel to store energy generated by fossil fuels or electricity. The Europeans as well as General Motors have been experimenting with it for a while, but it's not quite operational yet."