Washington University in St. Louis
OP-16: Student Commute Modal Split

The percentage indicated above is based upon the number of parking passes delivered to students throughout Fiscal Year 2017 (July 1-June 30) on the University's main campus. In FY2017, 17% of WashU students have received an individual parking permit. This means that the other 83% didn't use their personal vehicle as their primary mode of transportation going to the university, and therefore we can assume that they used a sustainable commuting. As a large majority of the student population lives on campus (all the first year students and a large part of sophomores) or in the nearby neighborhoods, driving alone to campus appears less convenient than most of other modes of transportation. The University has recently passed a new policy removing the distribution of parking permits to sophomores (since school year 2017/2018). The first year students were never allowed to request a parking permit. The percentages indicated in the optional fields below are estimations based upon the results of a Mobility Survey, a tool developed in part to assist in formulating and informing the Mobility Framework Study.The survey offers insight into the existing movement patterns of the WashU community and provides a baseline for the future development of new and improved mobility infrastructure to make a more inclusive, safe, accessible, and robust campus. The survey was distributed on-line over a 4-week period, between October 7th and November 7th, 2015. In order to represent the total community of WashU, this survey was distributed not only to students but also to faculty and staff. The representative populations were limited to those that are primarily based at the Danforth, West, North, and South campuses. In total, 1,181 people participated in the on-line survey.

The total percentage of the institution’s students that use more sustainable commuting options as their primary method of transportation is based upon the percentage of the institution’s students that didn't request/receive an individual parking permit during FY2017. The percentages of the institution's students attributed to each of the sustainable transportation modes are based primarily on a survey distributed to over 1,100 people from the WashU community at the end of 2015. Additional data is available regarding: the number/percentage of public transit passes distributed to students, the number/percentage of car-share members, etc. While we have this data, we have no system in place as of yet to determine how many of these transit passes/ alternative permits are relied upon as a primary means of transport.