Tufts University
OP-17: Employee Commute Modal Split

The Tufts Office of Institutional Research administered an online commuting survey to all employees and students on the university’s four campuses between on April 30, 2018. A 'census survey method' was used where the response rate needs to be at least 50% of applicable commuters. The email reminders were sent out to those who had not yet completed the survey for several weeks. Tufts emails the survey to most of the University (students, staff, and faculty), those that they have not pre-screened out as a non-commuter, and filters out those who are not applicable commuters. This filtering out happens when the survey participant indicates that they are “part-time” or if they are a student that lives on-campus. A total of 2,967 employees completed the survey, representing 71.5% of Tufts full-time employees. The survey has been distributed in April since 2014 since it is prior to finals and the end of the school year, represents a time without extreme weather, and not a particularly high vacation-taking period since it is in the heart of the academic year.

In the survey, employees were asked how they commuted from home to Tufts during a typical 5-day week (Monday - Friday) from April 23 - April 27, 2018. Employees who traveled by multiple modes of transportation (e.g., walk to the subway station) were asked to choose the mode with the most miles traveled. To obtain the numbers above, the totals for all 5 days of the week for each mode of transportation were averaged (e.g., 253 employees walked or cycled to campus on Monday, 272 on Tuesday, 250 on Wednesday, 245 on Thursday, and 228 on Friday - these numbers were added together to give a total number of employees walking/cycling in the week). The total number of respondents to each of the five days were added up (1,248) representing the numerator, and we used the total number of responses over the five days as the denominator (11,791), to get an average mode share over the course of the five days. This excludes anyone who listed they did not come to campus on a given day. Employees completing the survey could select one of the following commuting modes: Drove my own car, Drove my own motorcycle or moped, Carpool, Walked or cycled, MBTA Bus, Subway (the T), Tufts Davis Square Shuttle, Commuter Rail/Regional Train, worked remotely, and "I was not working/On vacation". Note in particular that the percentage for telecommuting provided above was calculated in the same manner and reflects the average number of people who telecommuted to the university during that week. It does not include people who telecommuted for part of a day. The weather during the week was as follows (from wunderground.com): Monday: mean temp 51 degrees F, precipitation 0.00" Tuesday: mean temp 56 degrees F, precipitation 0.00" Wednesday: mean temp 52 degrees F, precipitation 0.72" Thursday: mean temp 59 degrees F, precipitation 0.21" Friday: mean temp 52 degrees F, precipitation 0.54"