Understanding and Modeling the Activity-Travel Behavior of University Commuters at a Large Canadian University

This paper examines the daily activity-travel behavior of undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff at a large university to better understand their activity travel demands for automobile, active transportation (AT), and transit trips. The data were derived from the first university-based activity travel diary survey [Environmentally Aware Travel Diary Survey (EnACT)] conducted in spring 2016 at Dalhousie University, Canada. Results show that students reside nearer to the campus than faculty and staff, and their trip length from home to school is significantly shorter. Zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) models show that if housing tenure is less than 1 year, it is more likely that the traveler will make more AT trips but fewer automobile trips. It indicates that individuals living far from the campus will produce fewer transit trips than those who live nearer. Interestingly, the mean number of AT trips per day for the overall sample is more than one trip, whereas for automobile trips and transit trips it is less than one. The behavioral analysis and empirical models provide useful insights that can be utilized to represent university populations in regional travel demand models, as well as to develop campus-based travel demand management (TDM) strategies.