The Changing Attitudes and Behaviors of University Students Toward Public Transportation: Final Report

A three-wave longitudinal survey of a cohort of North Dakota State University (NDSU) students who matriculated in the fall of 2005 was conducted to investigate changing attitudes and travel behaviors. The longitudinal framework allowed for investigation of individual as opposed to group changes in behavior. The third wave of the survey found that most fourth-year NDSU students live off campus and nearly all of those who do have access to automobiles. One-third of off-campus students use transit to commute to campus occasionally while two-thirds have used the bus to travel between their residence and campus at least once. Students identified cost savings, convenience, reducing traffic congestion and parking demand as the primary benefits of transit. In the future, two-thirds of students stated that they will ride transit occasionally or regularly. Among those surveyed, 64 % of students stated that they would at the least consider voting for increased funding for transit. A mixed multinomial logit model was used to investigate the role of individual and alternative attributes on mode choice. The analysis found tha