This building is over 300,000 sf and located close to public transportation. Half of the tenants are government agencies. The building manager stated if we send out electronic surveys we will probably not receive more than 20% back. Therefore we opted to set up stations in the lobbies next to both entrances where employees will be asked to fill out commuting surveys. Here are my questions:
1) LEED reference guide, page 27, states surveys should "identify the transportation mode used to travel to the project building between 6am and 10am". I'm a little confused because the new LEED survey calculator mentions "morning and evening" commutes. So which is it??
2) Since a majority of the occupants are government agencies employees often take off Friday or Monday. Therefore, the building management staff plan to conduct these surveys in the middle of the week for two consecutive days in order to document a true random sampling. The survey will ask occupants to fill out information based on the previous Mon-Fri work week, but will not conduct the surveys until the following week. Is this acceptable, as long as we explain this well in the narrative?
3) Lastly, does the survey need to document the mileage driven for "single occupant vehicles". the reason I ask relates to occupants who use multiple transportation modes. For instance, if someone drives to a commuter parking lot then hops a train, how do we document this on the survey? In order to receive credit, would the mileage driven have to be less than the train distance?
Thanks!
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
April 7, 2011 - 4:24 pm
Stations in the lobbies are a great way to get responses - I have found that having interviewers asking questions is a way to expedite the information collection process and keep folks from having to take a full 'time-out' from hustling to get to their desks. Requires more people-power, but it can really increase response rates. To your questions:
1. The survey methodology assumes that people use the same means to get to/from work on a given day. In rare cases that may not be the case (cyclists taking the bus or a cab home on a rainy evening) but it's an assumption you can safely make.
2. Yes - given your situation, this seems perfectly sound.
3. Great question and EBOM doesn't specify a methodology here. In this instance, asking for mileages for each leg of the trip would be great (and one could then assign fractions of the commute to alternative and conventional means, much as is done with carpooling), or you could simplify the endeavor by counting multi-modal commuters as conventional. I think it depends how often you see this scenario arising, how you anticipate it will affect your performance numbers, and how it will affect response rate. Tough question - no easy answer there.
Hope that helps,
Dan
Wendy Gibson
156 thumbs up
April 13, 2011 - 4:29 pm
Dan - To follow up on gwenedd's question, if we choose to survey return or evening modes of transportation can we utilize that information?
Thanks!
Wendy
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
April 25, 2011 - 9:20 am
I don't see a reason why not Wendy - It's hard for me to imagine a situation where an alt transport user in the morning becomes a CSOV user in the evening or vice versa. There could be some modal changes within the alt transport group (I rode my bike to work but took the bus home because it was raining) but those changes are marginal enough so as to be largely inconsequential.
Dan