Executive Summary: Off-campus students travel to campus an average of five days per week, and have an average commute of 6.9 miles.  Over three-quarters of the respondents own a car or motorcycle and about half own a bicycle.  More than half of the students who come to campus on an average day come by motor vehicle, either as driver or passenger.  When asked for the primary reason that they do not use the free bus, students were most likely to say that the bus did not run either where or when they needed to go. 

On Tuesday, September 21, 1999, Project Pulse conducted a survey for Transit Services in order to find out how off-campus undergraduate students commute to campus. Pulse interviewers attempted to contact 1198 off-campus students who had been randomly selected by computer from the University’s database. Interviewers successfully contacted 653 of these students, and 547 (83.7%) agreed to be interviewed. The response rate for the survey was 45.7% and the sampling error is plus or minus approximately five percentage points. The final disposition of the sample is presented in Table 1 and a demographic summary of the respondents is presented in Table 2.

First, respondents were asked how many days they travel to campus in a typical seven-day week. Responses ranged from a minimum of one to a maximum of seven, with a mean of 4.8 days per week. Figure 1 details responses to this question.

Figure 1. How many days per week do you typically travel to campus?

Almost two-thirds of the respondents (61.5%, n=336) reported that they commute from Amherst, 7.9% (n=43) from Sunderland, 4.8% (n=26) from Northampton, and 2.2% (n=12) from Hadley. No other community accounted for as much as 2% of the commuting students. The average of respondents’ estimates of their commutes was 6.9 miles. Six individuals (1.2% of the respondents) reported commutes of more than 40 miles.

Over three-quarters of the respondents (82.7%, n=449) said that they own a car or motorcycle. Slightly under one-half of respondents (47.0%, n=255) reported that they own a bicycle.

The next set of questions asked respondents to report how they had commuted to campus on each day of the previous week. Figure 2 summarizes the responses to that question. Respondent behavior on the days Monday through Thursday was extremely similar, so Figure 2 uses the mean response for those days. The two weekend days were also extremely similar to each other and have been averaged. Friday was somewhat anomalous and has been graphed separately.

Figure 2. Commuting by Day of the Week

Half of the respondents (51.5%) either drove or were passengers in a motor vehicle on Monday through Thursday. Another third (33.4%) took the free bus, while 5.1% did not travel to campus in a typical day. Essentially all of the students who said that they combined methods used a car or the bus as one component of their journey. (See Figure 3 for a breakdown of all combinations that were listed by respondents to the open-ended question.) This means that over 90% of students either drove or took the bus to reach campus. On Fridays and weekends smaller proportions of students came to campus, but their methods of getting to campus followed the same pattern.

Figure 3. Travel strategies of students who combined methods.

Respondents who do not use the bus were asked to specify the most important reason that they do not use the bus to commute to campus. The most common reason, given by 90 respondents, was that the bus was not available, in the sense that it didn’t run close enough to where the student would need to be picked up or dropped off. Other students said that the bus schedule doesn’t work for them (n=30), that the bus is “inconvenient” (n=24), or “unreliable” (n=6), that it takes too long (n=11) or is too crowded (n=11). Sixty-two students gave “have a car” or “car is more convenient” as their reason for not using the bus, and others (n=8) mentioned the loss of independence in having to plan their movements around a bus schedule. Other responses included needing a car to pick up children, liking the exercise of walking or biking, and the importance of being able to park close to their destination due to a disabling condition.

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