The Evaluation of Home-School Itineraries to Improve Accessibility of a University Campus Trough Sustainable Transport Modes

Abstract

Sustainable mobility is often related to the balance between supply and demand transport, including in its development in terms of connection between the behavioural and economic factors. Furthermore, the investigation of travel reason is useful for the aforementioned selection, also correlating with the different age groups and gender. There is a growing need for young people to access university campuses but the transport supply is often not adapted to student needs. This problem involves compromising not only accessible status but also sustainability and therefore the environmental, economic and social aspect. In this way, it emerges that is necessary to adapt to the growing transport services with student economic availability, travel distance and waiting times. This work explored the accessibility of a university campus (school node), through interviews considering a current transport offer and home–school reason. It was also linked to the availability of parking lots adjacent to the campus and the occupancy rates of the various neighbouring car parks were also calculated, monitoring the aforementioned areas for about a month using video cameras and sensors. The research investigated both travel distances in Euclidean and network terms and both travel times through the use of a micro-simulation tool and a linear equation. The study shows as a first research step that the shared mobility solution saves time but also highlights the critical issues of the service that should be better adapted to the students’ needs in terms of rate, type of car and subscription.