Tell us what moves you

A little context: In late 2014, the then presidents of Ryerson, University of Toronto, York and OCAD universities met informally to discuss collaborating on studies to address key challenges faced by their students. Transportation quickly emerged as a critical topic area.

Out of the meeting, a team comprised of researchers from each university formed to work together to design and launch the StudentMoveTO survey, which went out to the universities’ 184,000 students in 2015. “Up to that point, most transportation studies had been conducted over landlines, leaving students largely underrepresented in transportation planning,” says Ryerson’s Raktim Mitra, a professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning, who was part of the initial team of researchers and is now leading the second phase of StudentMoveTO.

The study’s objective was to collect detailed data about where students live and how they travel throughout the day, especially with regard to their commute to university, as well as the factors that influence how they schedule work, studies and daily activities. Among the key findings released in 2016:

• About two-thirds of students relied on transit for getting to and from most of their daily activities (this jumps to 80 per cent for Ryerson students)
• One-third spent more than two hours a day commuting to and from campus
• 46 per cent chose courses based on their commute schedule
• 63 per cent said their commute sometimes discouraged them from coming to campus, and
• 65 per cent said it discouraged them from participating in campus activities

The data produced scholarly work, new classroom materials and provided university sustainability offices with information for campus planning purposes. Ryerson provided its specific findings to Metrolinx, which is now incorporating this data into its regional transportation plan.

While the insights were important for these four universities, the researchers understood this was just a subset of students in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). Supported by a $200,000 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, phase two includes participation of 10 universities and colleges in the GTHA, representing more than 600,000 post-secondary students—the largest transportation survey ever of this demographic.

This time Metrolinx and the City of Toronto are also involved. “With this broader partnership, more representative data and direct involvement from practitioners and decision-makers, our hope is this round of study will have a more direct impact on regional transportation policy,” says Mitra.

The expanded survey will also look more specifically at how commute and transportation experience affects student well-being. As well, it will explore how the rise of Uber/Lyft, the introduction of the York University subway extension and the significant amount of bike infrastructure built since 2015 influence students’ transportation experience.

To capture variations of transportation behaviour, every morning a randomized group of students from each of the participating academic institutions received emails asking them to respond to the online survey. The survey closed November 15, 2019, and all data will be made public in 2020. “We hope to host a symposium in early 2021 and bring together all the papers written to gain a holistic picture of what the data tells us,” says Mitra.

This story was first published in Ryerson University Magazine January 2020. To read more, visit Ryerson University Magazine (external link) .