2018 WWU Employee Commute Trip Reduction Survey Report

Vehicle emissions account for nearly half the harmful greenhouse gases released in our state, and in 1991, the Washington State Legislature passed the Commute Trip Reduction (CTR) Law to call on employers to encourage employees to drive alone less often, reduce carbon emissions, and keep the busiest commute routes flowing. The Employee CTR Survey was developed by the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) to help Washington State track any progress made toward reducing drive alone rates. The last time that Western Washington University employees took the CTR survey was in the spring of 2014.

In the spring of 2018, the Office of Sustainable Transportation (OST) distributed 2,743 Employee CTR Surveys to Western employees. This was the largest number of surveys that the OST has ever distributed. Western employees returned 1,920 surveys for a response rate of 70%.

Results

The complete results for the 2018 survey can be found at https://sustain.wwu.edu/sustainable-transportation/

Many Western employees took the time to submit insightful comments with their surveys. Some general trends in the comments included a desire for more support from the university administration for teleworking and working a compressed work week, such as a 4/10 or 9/80 schedule, improved parking policies, and increased bus service.

During the week covered by the survey, 945 respondents did not drive alone at least one day, and 456 did not drive alone all five days. The most common carpool size was two people. One hundred one employees worked a 4/10 schedule and three worked a 9/80 schedule. Thirty five percent of respondents reported teleworking anywhere from occasionally to three days per week. The top three reported reasons for not driving alone to work were environment and community benefits, personal health or well-being, and cost of parking or lack of parking. The top three stated reasons for driving alone to work were riding the bus is inconvenient or takes too long, I like the convenience of having my car, and family care or similar obligations. Note that for the purposes of this study vehicle miles traveled (VMT) is calculated per capita; in other words, it is the total miles of vehicle travel for the week divided by the total number of employees who took the survey.

For this survey, the mode split for Western can be seen in Table 1.

Mode

Split

Drive Alone

57.9%

Carpool

10.0%

Bus

11.4%

Bike

7.2%

Walk

8.4%

Telework

3.2%

Compressed Work Week

0.2%

Other

1.7%

Table 1. WWU mode split spring 2018. 

The majority of the people who work at Western live in Bellingham (Table 2).

Zip Code

No. of Employees

Employee Percentage

98225

760

39.58%

98226

309

16.09%

98229

421

21.93%

Table 2. Western employees by zip code.

Discussion

WSDOT"s target drive-alone rate for Western is 48.5%. This means that employees would have to make 630 less single-occupancy vehicle trips each week, which is approximately a quarter of a trip per week per employee. Another way to look at it is that if every employee who usually drives alone five days a week chose to travel to work by another means or worked from home one day a week, Western would reduce its drive alone rate by 1,112 trips and would easily be able to reach its target drive-alone rate. The national drive-alone rate is 76% (2010 Census) and the City of Bellingham"s drive-alone rate is 72%. Western is doing well, but we can do even better.

The Office of Sustainable Transportation plans to conduct the Employee CTR Survey again in the spring of 2023. At that time, the OST will also survey employees at each of Western"s satellite campuses. The WSDOT is working on improvements to the Employee CTR Survey, so by 2023 Western may be able to use an updated version.

The Office of Sustainable Transportation thanks everyone who participated in the survey. Your time is valuable, and we appreciate that you gave a little bit of it to fill out the Employee CTR Survey.