Appendix A — Term Project

An automobile-dominant transportation system is unsustainable. Cars are expensive to acquire and maintain,and are unavailable to many who have impaired vision, hearing,motor functions, or are too young or too old to operate them safely. Though electric vehicles are more prevalent than in the past, the transportation sector continues to account for approximately 29% of US greenhouse gas emissions (EPA), and much vehicle-related air pollution is not from tailpipe emissions alone. Between 30 and 40 thousand people in the United States die each year in vehicle crashes, and hundreds of thousands are severely injured.And as cities grow, the geometric requirements for parking and transporting vehicles overwhelm the space available for them. Moving to a transportation system based less on automobiles and more on public transit, micromobility (e-scooters, etc.), ride hailing, and active transportation is imperative. However,many governmentsdo not prioritize non-automobile investments, and many residents resistchangingtheir behaviors when automobiles are so convenient.

A.1 Project Overview

The goal of this project is to help you experience the opportunities and challenges associated with non-automobile transportation systems in Provo and Utah County. A secondary goal is to help you develop a recommendation to policymakers and the community based on your personal experiences. The project accordingly has two parts: In Part 1, you will experience the non-automobile transportation system in Utah County by living and traveling without your car for three consecutive days. In Part 2, you will be assigned to a team to consolidate your experiences into a recommendation, which you will communicate to the public via two means.

  1. A blog post published on the open internet
  2. A poster / flyer, which you will have the opportunity to discuss in class.

Part 1

In Part 1, you will experience the non-automobile transportation system in Provo / Utah County by living automobile-free for three consecutive days. By "automobile-free" I mean, "not your car." This system includes at least the following modes:

  1. Public Transit (UVX, FrontRunner, and UTA buses)
  2. e-scooters
  3. Bicycles and bike lanes
  4. Walking / sidewalks and trails
  5. Ridehailing (Uber / Lyft)
  6. Carpooling
  7. Telecommuting
  8. Others?

You may pick which three days you use for this assignment. Only one day may be a weekend or a holiday: that is, you may not simply stay at home for the entirety of MLK weekend and have it count, but you could do a Sunday, a Monday, and a Tuesday. Regardless of which days you use, two of your three days must include travel to other activities. For each day, you will complete a diary of your activities and travel modes using an online survey.

You may ask others for rides to places, but only if the driver is not part of your household; that is, you may not simply ask your spouse or roommate to drive you around. If you are traveling somewhere together, have fun on transit! There is a single exception to driving: You may access public transit via park-and-ride (or drop-off from a household member) if the bulk of the trip occurs on transit. For example, you may not drive from American Fork to Provo, and then take UVX to campus. If you do access transit with park-and-ride, you may not drive to other activities between your origin / destination point and the transit station. Your travel days must also occur in Provo / Utah County; you cannot go to Washington D.C. or another city with a robust transit system for three days and have it count for this assignment.

I recognize that this will be a very easy assignment for some students who already live without an automobile in their household, or who rarely use it. Those students could pick any random three days and be done. For other students who live far from campus and have other family or work responsibilities, this assignment could involve a good deal of sacrifice and time. If this describes you, I want you to know that I thought long and hard about what level of sacrifice I wanted to ask of you, weighed against the course learning outcome to understand and appreciate a fully multi-modal transportation system. As such, I anticipate modifications to this assignment for only two reasons:

  • You have a university-recognized disability that inhibits your ability to travel by other modes. In this case, you and I will develop an alternative experience.
  • You completed and documented (via the online survey) two consecutive days of car-free travel, and an unanticipated emergency required that you drive somewhere on your planned day three. In this case, I will allow you to petition me to choose a different non-weekend day. "Unanticipated emergencies" include those identified in the course syllabus for late work (illness, injury, bereavement, etc.)

You must complete and document (via the online survey) your three-day experience by the date specified in the course schedule. Receiving less than 50% on this assignment will result in a failing grade in the course.

At the end of part 1, we will have a class period where you will present your experiences to the class as a two-minute public comment with an associated recommendation.Your recommendation might take the form of an exhortation to the community (e.g., "You should take the bus!"), or it may be a recommendation to government agencies or other stakeholders (e.g., "UTA should improve its customer experience by…"). You should use persuasion in making this comment, tying your personal experience with relevant statistics from reputable sources. You should support your recommendation using findings from the academic and professional literature. Utilize reputable sources as you gather additional information. A few examples (definitely not a complete list) of such sources include the Transportation Research Board (TRB), the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), and the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. Other sources are also acceptable but be careful with independent data sources and news articles that themselves do not provide reputable sources.

Part 2

In Part 2, your team will consolidate your individual experiences and recommendatations from living without a car into a team recommendation.  Your recommendation might take the form of an exhortation to the community (e.g., "You should take the bus!"), or it may be a recommendation to government agencies or other stakeholders (e.g., "UTA should improve its customer experience by…")

The teams will be assigned by random number generation with instructor adjustment for team diversity and other considerations. The teams will have between three and five members, subject to overall course enrollment. A portion of the project grade is given to each member individually; team members will evaluate their teammate's diligence, responsibility, and quality of work using a survey.

Your team will prepare a poster / flyer conveying your recommendation to the public. Be creative in capturing the viewer's attention and in persuading them to consider your recommendation. A set of posters from Winter 2022 is available here. In the last week of class, we will go through each team's posters, and you will have an opportunity to discuss your recommendations and experiences with the class.  Submit your poster as an image file on Learning Suite before the deadline; a rubric is available on Learning Suite.