Mobility habits surveys: A real case application for university students in Italy

Within the definition of suitable sustainable mobility policies, the transport behavior of university students has long been analyzed for improving the transport system. Unlike other countries, the Italian university organization is not based on a "campus model", where in a unique location are located departments, classrooms, services and dormitories. Furthermore, for the Italian students the distance between the home and the university, although high, is often not so-high to recommend the transfer of the student's domicile near to the place of study. This circumstance produces a daily not sustainable usage of resources in term of travel time consumed, economic funds spent, and externality generated (pollution). Starting from these considerations, the aim of this paper was to design and develop a student mobility survey to investigate on: I) the daily transport habits; ii) the current travel demand; iii) the students' propensity in choosing more sustainable transport modes. The case study considered was the students registered at the University of Campania (south of Italy). A CAWI survey was conducted between October and December 2019 and about 2,500 students (sampling rate of 25%) were interviewed. From the main results emerge a largely heterogeneity in students' habits, which is directly related to different levels of transport accessibility of the university buildings. Overall, a greater propensity in using private car was observed (up to 81%) both because the average low quality of public transport and because a large and ease availability of free car parks near the university. By contrast, rail/bus transport services were preferred when the university is located near to the stations/terminals. The average car loading factor was equal to 1.5 students/cars higher than the national ones (1.3). Furthermore, the 47% of the interviewed are aware in using a carpooling service (sustainable transport mode) and 67% of them would be willing to use it, providing it is organized and managed by the University (higher safety and security perception). These results pone the basis for a sustainable design of mobility solutions/policies for the daily home-students trips.