The next time you’re walking across campus, stop and think for a minute. There are 60,000 people at this university: students, faculty and staff pouring in every morning on their way to work or class. Now, imagine if every one of those people drove to school. Imagine 60,000 cars parked up and down the streets of Madison, or 60,000 mopeds speeding around corners at breakneck speed. It’s a terrifying thought, isn’t it? The problem of transportation in a town like Madison is not new, but its impact on the environment, and on every person on campus is a growing concern. Fortunately, the UW-Madison Transportation Services Commuter Solutions Team, comprised of student and full-time employees, is working hard to meet the transportation needs of a growing and changing campus.
Each day, 60,000 people filter into the UW-Madison campus by car, bus, bike or on foot, like this student crossing the bridge across University Avenue.
Of the 40,000 students on campus daily, about 70 percent live within walking or biking distance. The rest rely on alternative modes of transportation, such as mopeds, buses and occasionally cars, to reach their destinations. Molly Coughlin, marketing specialist with the Commuter Solutions Team says, “Students are in a unique position on our campus, in that they are so close to everywhere they need to go.” Indeed, the relatively cramped nature of campus makes it ideal for the average student traveling on foot, and the growing number of apartment and housing developments located near campus has served to further increase the number of students walking to school.
Employees, however, are in a tougher fix. The majority live too far away to commute on foot or by bicycle and must brave the perils of traffic and increasingly sparse parking on campus. Motivated by the mounting difficulty of bringing a car to campus, many employees are looking for other ways to get to work.
With the introduction of the free transit pass, the number of employees who have taken advantage of public transit has increased, reaching as high as 20 percent during foul weather. This has reduced the strain on UW-Madison to provide parking for all commuters. Additionally, there has been a boost in employees taking part in many of the Commuter Solutions programs, such as flex parking, which provides special parking passes for employees who only occasionally need to make use of campus parking. Other options include the state carpool and vanpool. Despite these choices, as many as 50 percent of employees still drive to work daily, and the impact those vehicles have, not only on life in Madison but on the environment as a whole, is quite serious.
There are an estimated 250 million cars in the United States. Yearly, they produce approximately 314 million tons of CO2, or, in the words of an Environmental Defense Fund article on the subject, “as much CO2 as would be released from burning all the coal in a train 50,000 miles long.” The effect of vehicle emissions world-wide is even more staggering, and these emissions are one of the leading contributors to accelerated climate change. It’s not just cars that contribute to climate change either. Even in Madison, there are other types of vehicles that affect air pollution levels, one of which may surprise you: the moped.
All 13,000 parking spots on campus are currently in use, causing many employees to seek alternate methods of transportation.
One of the most common sights to greet any visitor to campus is, of course, the moped. Personal scooters have become as commonplace on college campuses as frat parties. Contrary to popular belief, these machines are some of the nastiest producers of air pollution around. Dar Ward, an analyst with Commuter Solutions, says, “People think that it has a smaller engine so it’s better for the environment, but that’s not necessarily true.” According to the LA Times, the average scooter or motorcycle produces as much as eight times as many hydrocarbons—a leading contributor to the greenhouse effect—than a car. Even an SUV or light truck produces fewer hydrocarbons per mile than a moped. “That’s something we’d like people to start learning about,” Coughlin says. “Because it’s something that’s pretty uncommonly known.”
Beyond the environmental ramifications of commuter vehicles, the infrastructure required to support them is equally taxing. The amount of parking available on campus has reached its limit, with all 13,000 stalls currently in use, and the production of more parking is a monumental undertaking. Commuter Solutions estimates the cost of building a new parking structure at more than $50,000 dollars per stall. Because of this staggering price tag, the people of Commuter Solutions are working hard to make more options available to the campus community.
The focus of the Commuter Solutions Team is giving faculty and staff options that fit their lifestyles. The programs and services provided by the team give each person on campus a choice, and seek a balance between those who wish to commute using alternate methods and those who want to, or perhaps must, commute by car.
The team’s current programs do indeed support this idea of options. The team provides a personalized outreach program, which allows anyone—student or employee—to get into contact with a transportation specialist who will work with them to widen their transit options. For employees who cannot make use of public transportation, Commuter Solutions offers a few programs, such as flex parking and car/vanpooling, which allow commuters to save money on gas and parking fees. The emergency ride home program supplies employees with reimbursement for a taxi ride in the case of an emergency, and Community Car sharing programs act as additional incentives to employees who want to take public transit, but worry about not having a car on campus.
Despite misconceptions that mopeds are relatively environmentally friendly, they can actually spit out eight times as many hydrocarbons as cars and trucks per mile driven.
Students around campus seem, overall, quite pleased with the state of public transit in Madison. “Considering the size of the population, Madison has a very impressive bus system,” AJ Fajnzylber, a freshman in political science, says. Considering the number of students that can be seen lining up for a spot on one of the many buses that cross campus daily, they must be doing something right. Speaking about the importance of public transportation, Allison Hall, a junior majoring in anthropology, says, “The buses are like the white blood cells in the veins of Madison.”
Although public transit is an integral part of campus life, the people at Commuter Services stress the need for a certain amount of equilibrium in campus transit. After all, if everyone took the bus, the cost to the university would be staggering and tuition would rise, and if no one did, there wouldn’t be nearly enough parking on campus.
So remember, the next time you begin your daily voyage to class, that it’s not only the environment you’re supporting by leaving Uncle Phil’s 1970s-era Vespa parked at home, but also the transportation needs of a happier and cleaner campus community.