Car Culture and Climate Change: A Student Op-Ed
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Attached are the meeting minutes from the 24 October Transportation SWATeam meeting.
Stacey DeLorenzo was able to join us in order to provide insight to the Road Management Objectives the SWATeam discussed earlier, and to answer questions. She also was able to take a look at other objectives and provide input on potential objective ideas.
The SWATeam confirmed submittal of Road Management, Active Transportation, and Business Travel Emissions objectives and added a new objective under Reducing Business Travel emissions.
The next meeting is 31 October 2019.
The mode share for campus employees driving alone is down from an original figure of 74% to only 60%! There is more work to be done to reach our FY20 goal of only 55%, but this is great progress! Check out the graph at 4.4 Reduce Single Occupancy Vehicle Usage, or read the attached files for more details.
The mode share survey email went out this afternoon.
The Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment has agreed to administer a mode-share survey helmed by Micah Kenfield, Sustainability Programs Coordinator.
See iWG assessment Trans008 Mode Share Survey here.
See SWATeam recommendation Trans008 Mode Share Survey here.
For future updates, please refer to Reduce Cars (Vehicle Miles Traveled) on Campus.
This recommendation has been transmitted to Evan DeLucia at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment.
See attached assessment file here.
See SWATeam recommendation Trans008 Mode Share Survey here.
Free To Ride, a documentary produced by The Ohio State University's Kirwan Institute, highlights the relentless spirit of community leaders from across Dayton, Ohio who overcame a suburban contingent fearfully opposed to the expansion of public transit along a commercial corridor, and the system of checks and balances that allowed justice and reason to prevail.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/95444875
This event is free and open to the public. Join us on March 7th at 4pm in room 112 at the Transportation Building.
Event Details: https://www.facebook.com/events/1554444197965701/
Funding was approved for the Regional Planning Commission to proceed with a study of policies that could reduce transportation emissions on campus. See attached funding request for details.
Meeting Minutes 4/21/17
In attendance:
Ximing Cai
Pete Varney
Brian Farber
Yanfeng Ouyang
Summary:
This meeting serve to continue discussion on campus fleet, bike parking, and campus parking. Also, Ximing Cai was introduced to the team.
Topics:
Discussion on Campus Fleet
Pete led a discussion on campus fleet efforts. He stated that converting campus fleet to EVs and CNG vehicles would have a large effect on campus emissions, and that campus utility is interested in learning about electric vehicles, but there are certain obstacles to converting campus fleet. First it would cost about half a million dollars or more. These costs are largely attribute to building infrastructure for CNG refueling systems. In addition, campus fleet vehicles for Facilities and Services as well as housing do not drive very far, so the fuel savings would be small. However, converting campus fleet would be practical as the vehicles do not travel off campus, meaning there will be no inconvenience in refueling the vehicles.
Bike Parking
We continued our discussion on bike parking from the last meeting. One of our concerns, given the cost of the permits, is security. Anyone who is paying for a permit must be certain that there bike is secure. We might want to have security cameras.
Parking
We discussed efforts to encourage less driving through parking incentives. Pete suggested having a passenger-car-free campus zone by placing parking outside of certain zones of campus. This idea was well received by the group and generally liked. However, we discussed challenges to any parking changes. We discussed specific proposals to adjust parking prices, shown here:
- Try to price people out of parking and mitigate this by reducing the price at other locations
- Allow flexible payment in percentage of salary
- Have and “auction” in which whoever pays the largest percent of their salary gets the closest location.
- Remove or lift parking cap so that wealthier parkers pay more and thus provide more revenue
- Have a private company raise rates on parking
Then, we discussed challenges to these proposals:
- Parking is important to unions – any changes may result in strikes or political conflict
- The sentiment of Parking and Campus master plan does not necessarily agree with people parking farther away – an objective that would be achieved through a passenger-car-free zone
- Hiring private company likely not a good idea – their primary motivation is profit
- City of Champaign changed parking ordinances so that spaces at churches, fraternities, etc, decrease
Our next meeting is TBD.
9/09/16
Summary: This meeting was our inaugural meeting for the year. On the agenda today was the creation of a team description, a review of ongoing projects, and planning for future meetings.
In attendance:
Josh Feldman
Claire Dondival
Ankit Singhai
Yangfeng Ouyang
Pete Varney
Lily Wilcox - Active Transportation Coordinator
Olivia Webb - Sustainability Programs Coordinator
Topics Covered:
Team Description
We collectively crafted our team description for the iCAP portal, which can be found at: https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/transportation-swateam.
Project Slides
Renewable Fleet Study:
Claire and Petehelped foster a discussion about the current types of alternative fuels for campus fleet vehicles. Currently, natural gas is the only type of fuel seriously looked at. One concern was that the gas CNG, while possible to implement, would be somewhat costly and have little payback unless driven many miles. Electric vehicles were brought up, but are currently not part of the market. Biodiesel was also mentioned, but its performance in cold weather is a concern.
Staff Mode Shift:
Lily discussed the ways that this project will reduce single occupancy vehicles. One idea looked at was bike sharing, which has been tried by Purdue but does not have much payback economically. Lily also discussed “It’s your MTD too”, which features social bus-riding trips which introduce MTD to campus employees.
Bike Plan:
This was a summary of effort to make campus more bike-friendly. This would include having more, and better, bike parking. UIUC was recently recognized as a bronze-level Bike Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.
Future Meetings
We decided that every other Friday at 1pm is a good time to hold meetings. We will be holding meetings in the National Soybean Research Laboratory. Our clerk Josh will send out reminders.
The News-Gazette published a story today about the percent of Champaign-Urbana residents that take active transportation to get to work. http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-08-19/c-u-driving-work-not-s...
The iCAP Working Group (iWG) met on April 2, 2015, to discuss and start the assessment of the SWATeam recommendation, Trans002 Parking Survey. The iWG's recommendation was:
"The iWG endorses this recommendation with the stipulation that survey questions should be vetted by the Transportation SWATeam and/or the iWG before the survey is performed."
See attached the iWG assessment complete with official comments from all the SWATeam members.
Following the completion of iWG assessment of Trans002 Parking Survey recommendation, it was forwarded to the Parking department on May 4, 2015.
The Transportation SWATeam submitted a recommendation stating, "We recommend that Parking Services organize a survey to gauge stakeholder interest in alternative parking plans. More specifically, a survey to gather data on how receptive stakeholders would be to parking plans which included a smaller amount of parking days per year to permit alternative commuting modes when this is feasible."
See attached the SWATeam recommendation, Trans002 Parking Survey, complete with comments from all the Transportation SWATeam members.
CUUATS completed a University District Traffic Circulation Study, using information from a campus-wide statistically relevant survey.
The following table shows the mode share information based on the survey conducted in April-May, 2011.
Level |
Travel Mode (%) |
||||||
Walk |
Bike |
Transit |
Drive Alone |
Carpool |
Get a Ride |
Other |
|
Faculty |
9 |
18 |
10 |
51.9 |
9 |
1.9 |
0 |
Staff |
5.4 |
6.4 |
9.1 |
65.2 |
9.7 |
3.5 |
0.6 |
Freshman |
50.2 |
12 |
34.8 |
0.7 |
0.2 |
0.7 |
1.4 |
Sophomore |
53.1 |
9.1 |
34.1 |
1.6 |
0.3 |
0 |
1 |
Junior |
48.5 |
12.6 |
28.8 |
8.6 |
0.6 |
0.9 |
0 |
Senior |
49.1 |
10.5 |
27.1 |
11.2 |
1.4 |
0.4 |
0.4 |
Masters |
23.4 |
13 |
41.3 |
18.4 |
2.1 |
1.8 |
0 |
PhD |
20.1 |
15.2 |
39 |
20.8 |
3.4 |
1.6 |
0 |