Green Seed Fund Project

For the Tacoma campus of the University of Washington, transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions since almost all of campus electricity is provided by hydropower.  The campus is growing fast, with 4300 students currently and plans to grow to 7000 students by 2017.  Moreover, as a non-residential campus serving South Puget Sound, almost all of these students must commute some distance to campus for class.  The aim of the Husky Lines Project will be to increase usage of public transportation by University of Washington Tacoma students through provision of bus lines, which run directly from high-density clusters of students to University campus with no transfers. In this initial phase of the project, a feasibility study for optimization of the program will be carried out using a mixed methods approach. First, the current distribution of the University’s students will be mapped, a network analysis will be conducted to determine the most accessible transit routes that will best serve students. In addition to this quantitative approach, a student surveys will be administered to collect qualitative data revealing barriers to student use of public transit. The qualitative data will also be mapped to see if there are any common barriers associated with certain geographic regions. These data will be compiled and used as the basis for recommendations for implementation of this program in the near future (separate request for funds from internal and external sources). The data would need to be regularly updated in future years to accurately represent new classes of students. At this point, the research would provide a template for easy re-creation of the same analysis, thereby leaving a legacy for the future of the university in terms of an existing program, and an easily worked-with system for updating the necessary data.