Our project is 750,000 sf office with 1277 occupants. Project is located in Miami and has it's own parking garage. Can we use garage swipe card documentation in place of a survey to determine number of commuters? Don't know if this is acceptable to USGBC. Would the morning timeframe still be the same as for the survey or would every daily one time inbound swipe be counted?
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Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
July 12, 2011 - 12:14 pm
Stephen, can you say more about the methodology? It seems like it might work as one data point, but how does it tell you who carpooled, who walked, who biked, who took transit, and if they drove what kind of car?
Sheryl Swartzle
Sustainability SpecialistTLC Engineering Solutions
63 thumbs up
July 12, 2011 - 2:33 pm
It doesn't tell who carpooled so each car is assumed to have one occupant. All others who arrived at work would have walked, biked, or used mass transit. There is no real on-street parking and to park in another garage (if possible) would be costly.
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
July 15, 2011 - 11:34 pm
Stephen, I think a reviewer would be troubled by the assumption that the cost of parking would be so prohibitive as to ensure that folks aren't doing it. Here in the Bay Area, parking in downtown SF is spectacularly, obscenely expensive and yet those garages seem to be plenty busy every day. The survey can be a hassle, but I think its your safest bet for getting the credit approved smoothly. I also imagine that if your survey result is very closely aligned with your garage swipe data, you'll have a stronger case to make for using that method in future re-certifications.
Hope that helps,
Dan
Ashley Lomel
PrincipalTLC Engineering Solutions
2 thumbs up
July 27, 2011 - 9:43 am
Dan,
If parking in that garage is free for a tenant with a parking card, why would they pay $20/day to park somewhere else?
The survey only touches a portion of the FTE. This method gives a count for all the FTE's as they must swipe their card to get in the garage. Since it doubles as a security card for bldg access afterhours, the swipe is a unique identifier for each FTE.