Sustainable mobility

Direction: Support a sustainable transportation system

Over 40,000 students, employees, and visitors travel to, from, and between Waterloo’s campuses each day. To support walking, cycling, public transit, carpooling, electric vehicles, and other sustainable modes of travel, Waterloo recently completed and released Shift:Mobility, its inaugural sustainable transportation plan.

Shift:Mobility outlines key actions for Waterloo to strengthen programs, services, and other supports for commuting, inter-campus travel, parking, and the campus fleet. Throughout 2025, these actions included expanded secure bike parking infrastructure, initiation of the fleet planning process, and direct advocacy with Grand River Transit to maintain and improve transit service levels for students and employees.

Waterloo measures commuting changes through a biennial travel survey, which will be updated in 2026. The University will continue to monitor the percentage of trips to campus by sustainable modes of travel, including impacts of the revised Flexible Work Guideline.

Indicators

Bike line icon
87% sustainable transportation modal share
Map with location marker line icon
19% land use for transport infrastructure on main campus
Cloud with CO2 line icon
435 tCO2-e GHG emissions from campus fleet

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Academic mission

Operational practice

Campus engagement

Related links:

An accessible version of this data can be downloaded here: Commuting Modal Split 2025 (Excel)

Actions and accomplishments

Attendees at Bike Fair
Bike room in East Campus

Historic actions and accomplishments

Actions from various departments and teams at Waterloo to advance this objective have included, but are not limited to:

2024

2023

  • Hired a Sustainable Transportation Specialist and initiated development of Waterloo’s first Sustainable Transportation Plan

2022

  • In June, Waterloo joined the region-wide Neuron e-bike and e-scooter share
    pilot, supporting sustainable transportation options between the campus and
    broader community.

2021

  • Hosted the annual Bike Fair, engaging over 250 campus community members on active and sustainable transportation programs and resources
  • Piloted telematics sensors on 15 fleet vehicles to determine their suitability to be replaced with an electric model over time
  • Launched a new internal subsidy for purchasing EVs within the campus fleet
  • Continued to electrify the fleet with a Chevy Bolt and two new Ford eTransit delivery vans

2020

  • After receiving a grant from NRCAN's ZEVIP program, Waterloo initiated the installation of 15 additional electric vehicle charging stations, to support both commuting, visitor, and fleet charging
  • Completed construction on and opened for use the secure bike cage between EV3 and ML
  • Hosted virtual Bike Month programming to encourage active and sustainable transportation at home
  • Purchased the campus' first fully electric vehicle
  • Initiated a telematics pilot over 30 vehicles to identify feasibility for electrification as well as opportunity for driver education around anti-idling and safety

2019

  • Most students and employees pivoted to remote working given pandemic restrictions

2018

  • Official launch of ION light rail transit, with stations in the R&T Park, Waterloo main campus, Waterloo Park, and next to the School of Pharmacy
  • Began pilot of electric scooters with Lime on South Campus and along the Laurel Trail
  • Piloted Dropbike in collaboration with City and Region of Waterloo
  • Purchased 10 additional bike racks for outside buildings
  • Launched new fix-it stations at all residence buildings

2017

  • An EB402 capstone project team conducted a research project to further analyze employee commuting data prior to the launch of ION
  • Piloted the Community Access BikeShare program with 15 bikes at three stations
  • Three electric vehicle charging stations were launched next to Engineering 6, including one level 3 electric vehicle charging station, and two level 2 stations
  • Hosted multiple Electric Vehicle showcase days on campus for students and staff to view EVs
  • Purchased the campus’ first hybrid vehicle

Methodology - modal split

Boundary

All University of Waterloo campuses. Excludes Affiliated and Federated Institutions of Waterloo.

Methodology

Limitations and Exclusions: 2012 through 2016 data collection focused on employees only. Student data was collected through the 2018 Travel Survey.

Data collection: Surveys were hosted through the TravelWise program and promoted to all employees and students in the fall to avoid biasing summer or winter weather conditions. Employees and students were asked to select their primary mode of transportation, as well as describe the mode of transportation used while commuting to the University over the past week. The survey also asked participants to indicate the type of vehicle they drove, distance driven, and what factors influenced their decisions to take particular forms of travel to campus. Additional demographic identifiers, such as student/staff/faculty, age range, gender, and full/part-time status were also collected. Surveys are conducted on a bi-annual basis.

Calculations: The mode split for each user type (student and employee) was calculated by summing the trips recorded over the past week. Waterloo also calculated the mode split based on the primary mode of travel (that which is used most often), and the primary mode of travel seasonally adjusted. In aggregate, the seasonally adjusted primary mode was 3% higher for driving and cycling, and slightly lower for walking, teleworking, and transit. Since the results were very similar and within the survey’s margin of error, Waterloo utilizes here the trips over path week methodology, in order to be comparable with other companies and organizations locally completing the TravelWise survey.

To calculate the combined employee and student mode split, Waterloo extrapolated the survey results proportionally within each respondent group (undergraduate, graduate, faculty, and staff) relative to the overall campus population. This increased the mode split considerably due to the larger number of students on campus.
The overall mode split was compared to information from Parking Services on average parking lot utilization rates throughout the year. While these will only link to the drive-alone and potentially carpooling modes, there is a comparable average lot utilization rate to the reported drive-alone activity within the survey, which helps reinforce survey findings.

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