This week I decided to involve some of my friends in an investigation into roughly how long Union students spend in a car weekly. I decided to ask the simple question, “How long, roughly, do you think you spend in a car per week?” and recorded the responses I received. The data represents the amount of minutes a handful of Union students spend weekly in a car. The data reflects 50% of those interviewed spend 30 minutes or less in a car weekly and 50% spend more than 30 minutes in a car weekly. I was pleasantly surprised to find that all individuals I interviewed spent under an hour in a car on-average, which is limiting their carbon footprint on the environment when they are at school. The data is possibly a reflection of the small size of Union contributing to students choosing to walk distances instead of driving them. The warmer weather we are experiencing may also be contributing to this data.
I would usually think that people would spend much more time in the car weekly, but the fact that most people live on this campus and don’t have to commute every day makes this make a lot more sense. This minimal amount of time spent using transportation is definitely better for the environment!
I like how you contributed other factors such as the weather and the campus size, I feel that makes a big difference as well. What I would like to know is what their average time spent in the car would be in the summer? Especially since a lot of college kids take road trips or drive to work everyday during the summer. How much would that number increase If at all?
A lot of people have asked really good questions about what went influenced these statistics, like weather, campus size, sample population, etc.. I’m curious about what makes this split so 50/50, what lifestyles are being led to make such similar data?
I think a lot of union folks are comfortable confronting their own biases against the environmental impact that this school is contributing, I love these graphs ,the examples you use are very relatable