Fall 2006 Travel Diary Study
Welcome to the Clemson University Transportation Research Team website, and thank you for your interest in the Clemson Travel Patterns project. In Fall 2006, Clemson student and faculty transportation researchers are launching a travel diary study as the third phase of data collection on the travel needs of the Clemson community. This travel diary builds upon the Internet and intercept survey work of Fall 2005. In those studies, researchers asked the Clemson community about typical travel choices, such as whether people typically walk, drive, or ride CAT. To see the preliminary findings presented to Clemson administration and local leaders in transportation planning in December 2005, please click here. This next phase asks the Clemson community to give detailed information in a travel diary about where and when people need transportation options. Survey findings will lead to transportation recommendations for campus planners and decision-makers. For the travel diary, you will complete a detailed confidential description of your travel over one week. Your participation will help us understand and depict current and future transportation needs of students, faculty, and staff of the Clemson community.
Participation in the travel diary study involves completing a detailed confidential description of your travel during a seven-day period in a diary that will be provided. The travel diary will pinpoint travel patterns, reason for mode choice (automobile, bus, walk, etc.), and other characteristics of individual trips. Diary findings will lead to recommendations aimed at improving mobility campus-wide.
The study will take place between September 25 - October 6, 2006. For more information or to sign up to participate in the travel diary study, please send your Clemson University e-mail address to Ben Boyles at bboyles@clemson.edu. The location and times when diaries will be avaliable for pickup will be e-mailed to you.
Project Background
Clemson University is embarking on large-scale unprecedented changes to campus circulation and mobility for the Clemson Community. The Board of Trustees has established a vision for a pedestrianized central campus and no further construction of surface parking lots. Even as the proportion of freshman bringing cars to campus has risen from roughly 30 percent to 80 percent in the past decade, Clemson transportation planners must find ways to provide access to campus facilities and maintain Clemson’s reputed high standard for quality of life.
Clemson Parking Services and Clemson Area Transit are collaborating to establish new opportunities for access and mobility for the Clemson community. This collaboration is seeking to expand transit operations from its existing ridership already anticipated to exceed 1.3 million passenger trips in 2005. One primary aspect of this expansion will involve creating an intermodal facility on campus and a satellite park-and-ride lot at Garrison Arena. Initial efforts on this project have already resulted in:
- multidisciplinary faculty collaboration for research outcomes related to environmentally sensitive pavement and landscape architecture at Garrison Arena;
- a request for $24 million in federal appropriations for an intermodal transportation facility incorporating 10,000 square feet of office and operations facility space, including Clemson Area Transit offices;
- a planned charrette for integrating the design of the intermodal facility into the fabric of the campus;
- student government approval of a transit fee with projected annual revenue of $1 million;
- dedication from Clemson Parking Services for $4.8 million dollars to contribute to Clemson Area Transit operations; and,
- plans for a $5-million bus storage, maintenance, and service facility to support Clemson Area Transit.
While these results reflect milestones in campus mobility provision, they only reflect the supply aspect of the balance of supply and demand that characterizes transportation planning. Providing facilities and services must work in coordination with understanding the mobility needs of the Clemson community. Facility siting and transportation service timing should follow from an understanding of the transportation needs of the people who will use the transportation system on campus.
This web site represents the next step. Clemson Parking Services funded a graduate studio (2005-2006) and an undergraduate Creative Inquiry (2006-2007) in Clemson's Planning and Landscape Architecture Department to investigate travel demand at Clemson. The objective of this student research course is to determine travel patterns of the Clemson community. Through surveys of students, faculty, and staff, student researchers can analyze the movement of people to determine where overcapacity might exist and where needs lie latent. This travel demand analysis will lead to recommendations for reshaping campus circulation.
The survey project has been divided into three sub-studies:
- a survey of football travel demand (data collection conducted in the 2005 season),
- a campus-wide survey of routine travel patterns (data collection conducted November 21 through December 12, 2005), and
- a travel diary study for a smaller sample of the Clemson community (data collection conducted September 25-October 10, 2006).
The purpose of this overall study is to improve mobility to and from campus facilities through transportation recommendations made from collected survey results.
We are currently processing data. Preliminary unweighted results incude the following chart of the places that people visit on football game days and the factors that influence people's transportation decisions on game days (higher scores indicate greater importance to respondents):
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Factors Influencing Football Travel Decisions |
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Thank you for your interest in this project. We will post results on this web site as we complete our analyses. Please check back for further findings.
| 2005 Graduate City and Regional Planning Studio |
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Clemson Travel Patterns Survey Principal Investigator: anned@clemson.edu |