University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
OP-19: Student Commute Modal Split

Since there is not a reliable method of calculating this number and in the absence of a scientific survey, some assumptions are made based on campus parking permits. While there are some who drive without permits, all parking on campus requires a permit and it is safe to assume most vehicles that come to campus are single occupancy vehicles. To balance these two outliers, we assume that all vehicles are single occupancy vehicles to account for those that use parking meters regularly. In reality, there are probably a decent percentage of students that carpool and obviously plenty of metered parking used regularly. Additionally, there are commuter permits owned by students who live locally, but only use their vehicles sporadically. There is also a lightly used regional bus service. This would indicate that those who use sustainable transportation might be higher. However, there are 1,868 Residential permits sold to students in the Residence Halls and many of them travel home on weekends. Since this is not strictly related or required to attend classes, it is not considered part of our measurement but is large enough to note the significant emissions that accumulate from this practice. Therefore, we consider our assumption to be conservative in nature until a proper measurement of sustainable transportation use can be assessed but we do acknowledge that our conservative estimate is more than negated by the practice of weekend travel by on-campus, residential students, who make up 38.4% of our population.