Many tenants in our building use public transportation park and rides. They drive to a specific location, park their car and get on public transit for the rest of their commute. Its does not appear that SCAQMD provides direction on how to deal with this. Is it safe to assume that park and rides should be counted the same way carpools/vanpools are? On page 7 of Rule 2202 is states that you can count a carpool/vanpool if it was used for the majority (51%) of the total trip distance. Can the same be done for a park & ride situation? If tenants take the majority of their trip on public transportation, can I just cound that? As an alternative, I would have to define the pecentage of trip taken by public transportation and the other form of transportation (which could be via carpool or bike...) and appropriate the trip accordingly.
Thanks.
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
November 20, 2011 - 8:55 am
Wendy - My sense is that this is a situation where a perfect survey and a 'good enough' survey might differ. As you've noted, defining the % of the trip undertaken in each form of transportation and weighting each occupant accordingly (someone who drives 25% of the way then rides the bus 75% of the way would count as a .75 RCCT) would be the most accurate method. However, a survey detailed and thorough enough to glean that information might also be lengthy enough so as to depress your response rate significantly. On the other hand, I have seen surveys that count individuals who use public transport for any portion of their commute as alternative transport users, which seems misleading as well. I think your proposal - if the majority of an occupants commute (by mileage) is via alternative means, count them as an alt transport user - is probably the most sensible balance between the two.
Hope that helps,
Dan