I am helping a residential development in New York City see if they can get LEED certification. The project is located in downtown Manhattan with close proximity to subway lines, ferry, bus lines. Also since it is located very close to the financial district, most people walk or bike to work. They also have bike racks for the residents. They can definitely score a lot of points on alternative commuting, but the property managers have said that it would be difficult for them to conduct a survey. Is there another way to gain credits for this without the survey? For example use available city data to calculate how many residents of that zip code use public transit to get to work?
Please advise.
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Michael DeVuono
Regional Stormwater LeaderArcadis North America
LEEDuser Expert
186 thumbs up
July 11, 2013 - 10:38 am
This credit requires that you document the building users personal transportation modes. I'm not sure how you do that without conducting a survey of the occupants. Honestly, it is not very hard to conduct an online survey of all the occupants of the building.
If you want to achieve this credit, the owners have to put in some effort.
Prachee Mishra
July 11, 2013 - 3:00 pm
Hi Michael,
I understand that a survey would help the most in this case. Its a multifamily residential building and the leasing company is worried that the tenants might not be willing to fill out the surveys. We would still go ahead with one. Just in case we do not get a good response rate, is it possible to use the commute modal share census data for the corresponding census tract and use that to generate commute patterns? We do have census data for that tract which shows that 50% people from that area use public transit and 35% walk to work. Does this seem feasible?
Michael DeVuono
Regional Stormwater LeaderArcadis North America
LEEDuser Expert
186 thumbs up
July 11, 2013 - 3:12 pm
I do not definitely know the answer to your question regarding using census tract data. This seems like it would need to be a statistics problem, and you would need to demonstrate that the demographics of your building were in line with the demographics of the census tract.
My gut (and my former stats professor) tells me that you can not simply apply the commuting patterns of an entire census tract to one building (unless your building is the entire census tract, or your building is an equivalent demographic representation of the tract).
Perhaps you are barking up the wrong tree with this. Can the property owner offer some incentive to complete the survey? Maybe a few dollars off rent? A movie night in the lobby? Offer them different means to complete the survey: online, paper, phone, in-person.
Prachee Mishra
July 11, 2013 - 3:15 pm
This makes sense. I'll definitely talk to the owners about this and see what they can do.
Thanks!
Trista Brown
Project DirectorWSP USA
449 thumbs up
September 2, 2013 - 7:57 pm
Hi Prachee, I just want to chime in and agree with Michael that census data wouldn't be sufficient to document this credit. In fact the survey must be for a specific five-day period. In other words, you can't ask the residents for information on their general commuting habits or how they commute during a "typical week" - you need ask about a specific consecutive five-day window.
Let us know how it goes!
Trista