Many Toronto university students facing long commute times to campus say the distance to school is negatively impacting their university experience, according to a survey of students from the University of Toronto (U of T), Ontario College of Arts and Design, Ryerson, and York.
The study, titled “StudentMoveTO,” was led by a team of transportation experts at each of the four universities and surveyed 15,000 students from September to December 2015.
The survey found that over 5,000 students involved in the study– about a third of respondents–spent more than two hours traveling to and from campus on a daily basis.
Roughly 90 per cent of students facing a commute of one hour or more said they were discouraged from participating in on-campus activities, according to data from the study.
The survey also found students living 30-kilometres or more from campus were nearly 15 per cent less likely to come to campus on any weekday, compared to those living within 10-kilometres. About a quarter of students in the study lived 20-kilometres or more from campus.
“[T]he further a student lives from campus, the less likely they are to travel to campus,” the report explained.
U of T student Jackie Houston said relying on the city’s GO Transit system can cost students anywhere from two to four hours a day getting to and from campus.
“This drastically reduces [the] time available to attend professors’ office hours, school sports, or social events,” she said.
U of T student Stephen Xu said he’s worried about long commute times and the impact they have on university experience.
“Building a strong university community can be very difficult when a lot of people can’t get to campus in a reasonable time” Xu said. “To have a strong community in university, a lot of things require physical presence on campus.”
For some students, taking advantage of online classes can help ease the impact of commuting to and from school on a daily basis. Third-year Carleton journalism and political science student Rielly Riggs said she lives 30-kilometres from university, which affects her experience in a similar fashion to many Toronto students.
“I find the commute to be tough,” Riggs said. “I try to enroll in at least one online class per semester, because this usually frees up a day for me, meaning one less day I have to commute [to] school.”
The study’s organizers are continuing to analyze data from the survey, and said they hope to find a potential solution to long commute times for students, according to the report.
