How do post-secondary students in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) travel?
Over 18,500 post-secondary students from ten colleges and universities in the GTHA participated in the 2019 StudentMoveTO survey to help answer that question.
The 2019 Transportation Survey Findings are available on the StudentMoveTO website, and the survey dataset is available on request. The recent survey builds on the first StudentMoveTO survey conducted in 2015.
Some key findings are:
- the average one-way commute time is 45.9 minutes
- 60% commute on public transit
- 50% say their commute was a factor in choice of school
- 60% say their commute limits their participation in campus activities and events
The document concludes that the wealth of data collected can be used to benefit students, post-secondary institutions and GTHA transportation:
. . . our preliminary findings suggest an improved commute experience would have positive benefits for student well-being, campus vitality, and transportation throughout the region.
UTTRI’s StudentMoveTO contributions
The StudentMoveTO survey uses TRAISI software developed in-house at UTTRI by Brendan Reilly, Model System Designer/Programmer at UTTRI’s Travel Modelling Group, and others.
Professor Khandker Nurul Habib and PhD student Sanjana Hossain designed and conducted the StudentMoveTO survey.
Habib and Hossain also cleaned and prepared the final dataset that was used in the 2019 Transportation Survey Findings.
About StudentMoveTO
The goal of StudentMoveTO is to better understand how students travel to and from campuses and other destinations.
It is a collaborative research partnership which includes ten colleges and universities, the provincial transportation planning agency – Metrolinx, the City of Toronto, as well as several community organizations, and is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant.
StudentMoveTO 2019 was launched September 24, 2019 at Toronto’s Metro Hall.
Investigators
- Raktim Mitra, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Ryerson University (Principal Investigator)
- Khandker Nurul Habib, Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto
- Matti Siemiatycki, Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto
- Roger Keil, Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University
- Jeremy Bowes, Faculty of Design. OCAD University
With Research Assistance from
- Ryan Taylor, Attiya Haseeb, Patrick Duran Yutiga, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Ryerson University
- Sanjana Hossain, Department of Civil and Mineral Engineering, University of Toronto
- Ryan Barquero, Bo Louie Siu, Faculty of Design, OCAD University
StudentMoveTO 2.0 project website
Read the report: StudentMoveTO: From Insight to Action on Transportation for Post-Secondary Students in the GTHA, 2019 Transportation Survey Findings
Media coverage: “The school commute is a barrier to success for Toronto students,” NOW Magazine, September 6, 2020.
Related content
- Student travel needs StudentMove 2.0 focus
- Development of the TRAISI Web Survey Builder: Designing to Reduce Bias and Respondent Burden in Household Travel Surveys, 2018 MASc thesis by Brittany Chung, supervisors Professor Khandker Nurul Habib and Professor Eric J. Miller