News Archive

Staff and students almost created a traffic jam in their eagerness to take part in a recent University transport survey.

A total of 4,749 people responded to the online Commute Survey, the results of which will help guide decisions about the future of transport and parking at UWA.

A student and a staff member each won prizes for completing the survey in June.

Tayla Knox, a Commerce student, and Danny Nowland, a publications officer at UWA Extension, won iPad minis for taking part.

Ruth Balding , UWA Transport Co-ordinator, said the number of staff and students who took part in the survey showed how important transport issues were in the University population.

"Revenue from parking fees goes towards funding initiatives to get people away from their single-person car journeys every day,"  Ruth said. She is  working on initiatives to encourage staff and students, where they can, to switch some car journeys to public transport or bicycle.

"This is very challenging as many have very good reasons to drive to UWA, such as working late or having children to collect from school.  As well, many of the University population live in areas which lack good public transport services or they lack the confidence to ride their bikes safely to UWA," she said.

"This is why the Commute Survey is so important.  It gives us a snapshot of what people are thinking and doing about transport to UWA.  And many respondents had very good ideas about measures that would assist the transport and parking situation."

Danny said he drove his car every day because, if he took a train, it required a 20-minute walk at each end of the journey, a change of trains in the city, and an uncomfortably crowded trip.

"As I work at the Claremont campus, parking is easy, so I come in about 10am and stay later, so I avoid peak-hour traffic, " he said. "But if UWA wants fewer cars on campus, I recommend more people working from home.  I'm an advocate of that."

Tayla said she drove her car to the campus each day as she usually had evening lectures and she didn't want to take public transport in the dark.  She parked in ‘the sandpit' (not a UWA car park) near the south end of campus for $2 a day, as most of her classes were in the Business School.

Other prize-winners who each received a $50 Coop Bookshop voucher were Roz Jaworski, Eva Schluchter, Mark Boulton, Scott Nichols and Holly Beattie, all staff members and students Brendan Martin, Alvin Wibawa, Egan Churchill-Gray, Rhys Deimel and Kieran Clancy-Lowe.

Ruth hopes to have the results of the survey by the middle of next month.