Exploring Student Commute Behavior and Identifying Opportunities to Minimize Commute GHG and Air Pollution Emissions: A Case Study

Abstract

A business commute footprint is a significant factor related to buildings and infrastructure. Commute trips constitute a major portion of daily traffic; causing traffic congestion, travel delays, greenhouse gas and air pollution emissions, and traveler stress. In addition, daily commutes consume significant portions of traveler budgets and impacts traveler health. This paper presents the results of an exploratory pilot study performed at two universities, University of Colorado Denver and California State University, Fresno. In this pilot study, undergraduate students in four engineering classes completed a two-day travel survey eliciting their commute choices and preferences to and from campus. This paper presents the analysis and discussion of these survey results. It uncovers student commute patterns and explores preferences and potential incentives to understand commute travel mode values, concerns, and choices. Initial findings reveal high reliance on individual automobiles as well as highlight significant opportunities to optimize student commute footprints. These findings support additional publications, where a geographical information system (GIS) model is developed and integrated with an optimization model to identify the optimal selection of business commute alternatives (e.g., driving automobile, carpooling, using public transportation, biking) that minimize business commute footprint based on individualized commute incentives (e.g., monitory incentives, burned calories, saved commute time).

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