Sustainable Transportation and Grounds in UIC - University of ...

Report to UIC Chancellor’s Committee on Sustainability and Energy
composite index giving the extent to which residents have access to
transit (bus and rail). The TAI measure is based on three input
measures – frequency (person-minutes served), hours of service
(number of hours) and service coverage (percentage of the area
covered). Close to 38% of faculty and staff reside in zipcodes where
the TAI values are excellent to good.
Another indicator of the ability of faculty and staff to use alternative
modes of transportation is the extent to which their neighborhoods are
pedestrian friendly. Figure 3 shows the extent to which faculty and
staff resides in areas that are pedestrian friendly as measured by a
Pedestrian Friendliness Index (PFI). The PFI is a composite index
ranking tract suitability for non-motorized travel including pedestrian
and bike travel. The PFI is calculated with input values of population,
income, number of households, amount of commercial and residential
land uses as a percentage of census tracts, weighted pedestrian trip
origins and destinations from the census journey to work data, and
Pedestrian Environment Factor (PEF) values, where PEF’s are the
average number of blocks for the quarter section within each census
tract and the eight adjacent quarter sections. Close to 40% of UIC
faculty and staff reside in areas within the six counties that have
excellent PFI levels; another 25% or so reside in areas with “Good”
values of PFI. These patterns are indicative of the necessary
infrastructure being there for a large number of faculty staff to be able
to access transit, express bus and other higher occupancy modes of
travel.
Figures 2 and 3 also show that there are enough “spatially clustered’
groups of faculty and staff to whom transit is not available or who do
not reside in areas which are conducive to biking or walking.
Employees in these spatially clustered groups may be better served
with express buses, vanpools, carpools and other high occupancy
modes.
The distribution of distances at which students live from campus is
shown in Figure 4. Almost 20% of UIC students live within 2 miles of
campus and about 35% live within 5 miles. In FY2007, 3,109 students
resided in campus housing in the east, south or west sides. Students
also share apartments or have other types of shared housing in the
Taylor Street, Pilsen and Tri-Taylor areas. Many students also live in
neighborhoods along the CTA Blue line. However, a large number of
students appear to be commuting more than 25 miles to come to
school. Close to 90% of UIC students have a valid driver’s license and
about 72% have a private vehicle available to them.
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