Abstract Manager

Probing the Canadian Census, and key travel surveys such as the Transportation Tomorrow Survey conducted in metropolitan Toronto and TransLink’s Trip Diary Survey conducted in metropolitan Vancouver, it becomes evident that a large proportion of university students living in residence are not reported with their university campus as their home location.  Most frequently, they are reported as living at their permanent residence, i.e. their parents’ home, and it is unclear to what extent any travel from or to campus is reported.  This will not be an issue for post-secondary students who truly are commuting to school on a regular basis, as well as upper-year students who live off campus for the entire year, who should be reported as being part of a unique and distinct household (though whether these university students are adequately captured in travel diaries is a separate question). 

The obvious follow-up question is whether this is a significant issue at the regional level, and what might be done about it if it is.  This presentation suggests that missing out on travel by university students can be a significant issue for university towns, as well as urban areas dominated by a large university campus, such as UBC in Point Grey.   Recent transportation studies carried out for UBC, as well as Peterborough, have discovered that the regional travel models do not calibrate well to observed transit counts, due to missing out on these university students. 

The presentation will also consider the case of seniors in retirement homes and assisted living facilities to determine how missing this population might skew demand forecasts, though in general residents of these types of facilities are expected to travel less than post-secondary students.   In both cases, the spatial patterns of group quarters’ residents must be examined.

The presentation will end with a discussion of the techniques used to account for this missing travel in the regional travel model and how to bridge this gap.