The UW supports low impact modes of commuting to increase health, reduce pollution, and ease traffic congestion.
Our goals
The Sustainability Action Plan calls for the UW to decrease the rate of single-occupancy vehicle commute trips by 2028. The goal is for each UW campus to lower the mode share of these trips 6 percentage points by 2028. For example, the Seattle campus had about 18% of all commute trips taken by single-occupancy vehicles in 2019, and the goal is to lower that to 12% by 2028. The UW is doing this by promoting alternative forms of transportation such as public transit, biking, walking, and carshare as well as encouraging telecommuting to avoid trips to and from campus.
What we're doing
- Supporting transit: U-Pass offers unlimited rides on regional buses, commuter trains, light rail and other transportation options by simply using your Husky Card. All UW students who pay the Service & Activities Fee are automatically U-Pass members, and staff are eligible for a fully subsidized U-Pass. This allows most members of the UW community easy access to public transit across our region.
- Helping bike commutes: UW Transportation Services encourages bike commuting by offering several different bike parking options, as well as other resources (bike routes and support, bike rules and safety and general information about walking and bicycling to campus). The Other efforts to promote biking include Ride in the Rain month in the Fall and Bike Everywhere month in the Spring, as well as a heavily-used bike valet station at home football games.
- Rideshare support: Transportation Services offers free parking passes for transit area vanpools and discounted passes for carpools.
- Electric vehicle charging: There are several public EV charging stations on the Seattle, Bothell and Tacoma campuses. Transportation Services is working to add more public EV stations on the Seattle campus.
- Telecommuting: Policies enable people to work from home rather than contribute to traffic congestion.
UW students created OneBusAway
The app created by two UW graduate students transformed how people use transit.
Academics and research
Many different departments, centers and labs are working on sustainable transportation issues, including the Mobility Innovation Center.
"It is our goal to harness technology, innovation, and partnerships to become the first sustainable mega-region in the world."
- The UW Sustainable Transportation Lab, led by Don MacKenzie from the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
- Washington State Transportation Center (TRAC-UW), a cooperative, interdisciplinary transportation research agency.
Transportation research also happens across many different areas of UW. For example:
- College of the Built Environment (research on bicycle counts and weather in Seattle).
- Evans School of Public Policy & Governance (impact of bike share programs on commuting by bicycle)
UW commuting data
Learn more
Learn more about UW Transportation Services' efforts in this webinar from March 2024: