Students’ home-university commuting patterns: A shift towards more sustainable modes of transport

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Paulo
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Outros Autores: Fonseca, Fernando Pereira da
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/82078
• topic: Student mobility; Modal choice; University campus; Sustainable mobility; CO2 emissions; CO emissions 2; Engenharia e Tecnologia::Engenharia Civil; Science & Technology; Cidades e comunidades sustentáveis

Students commuting to and from university campuses have important social, environmental and transportation impacts. Based on a questionnaire conducted with 686 students from the University of Minho, Portugal, this study analyses the transport modes used in their commuting trips, the potential to shift towards more sustainable modes and the respective CO2 savings by considering two scenarios: an optimistic and a most likely scenario. Although 54% of students travel less than 5 km and 62% travel less than 20 min, 42% of them prefer to drive to university. Considering the students’ travel distances and times, 55% of the trips could potentially be carried out by active modes of transport, while motorised trips could decrease from 70% to 45%. Depending on the scenario analysed, the modal shift can reduce the emissions of CO2 from 8% up to 27%. The findings described in this study can help university campus managers and urban planners in adopting planning policies to make mobility more sustainable.