Transportation: Emissions Analysis
Non College Owned Vehicles
Non College-owned vehicles consist of motorcoaches for athletic and academic travel, personal vehicles used for Williams-related business, students cars, and Zipcars.Rental Vehicles
In 2007 travel in rental vehicles was roughly 500,000 miles, accounting for approximately 8% of the total miles driven for college business. By far the largest category (Table 1) is reimbursed travel in personal vehicles, which includes travel for: (1) athletics; (2) conferences and meetings; (3) classes, and (4) department and office business. Athletic travel in rental vehicles, mainly buses, is a minimum estimate for all athletic travel since many teams regularly use the College Rental fleet to travel to practice and to competitions. Classes and lab sections (academic travel) also use a mixture of bus and the college rental fleet for travel. Because the college does not have records for rental vehicles, we calculated those travel miles using the college’s reimbursement rate or the cost of the trip and estimated fuel economy for bus travel, checked using trips where both costs and distances were known.Table 1. Measured and estimated distance traveled and CO2 emissions by rental vehicles, FY 2007.
| Category | Miles | Fuel Consumption (gallons) | C02 emissions (tonnes) |
| Reimbursed College Travel | 325,902 | 13,036 | 117 |
| Athletic Travel | 122,507 | 24,501 | 219 |
| Academic Travel (field trips, etc.) | 24,501 | 4,900 | 44 |
| Zipcar Travel | 23,267 | 931 | 8 |
| Total | 496,177 | 43,368 | 388 |
Commuting
Substantial amounts of fuel are consumed and greenhouse gases released in the commuting to campus by faculty, staff and students, and for student travel while they are in residence at Williams. A portion or all of these greenhouse gases should be considered as part of the college’s carbon footprint and at least some of the travel could be reduced by changes in habits. There are no formal or informal records of miles driven or fuel used by commuting activities, so the values we discuss are estimates based on residential locations and surveys of driving behavior. In 2007, based on the assumptions discussed above, the average faculty/staff member drove 81 miles per week while the average student with a vehicle drove 67 miles per week.Table 2. Estimated commuting distance traveled and CO2 emissions by category, FY 2007.
| Category | Miles | Fuel Consumption (gallons) | C02 emissions (tonnes) |
| Students driving (campus) | 20,303 | 812 | 7 |
| Students driving (local and regional) | 821,363 | 32,855 | 290 |
| Students driving to and from campus | 30,739 | 1,230 | 11 |
| Faculty and staff commuting | 3,828,975 | 153,159 | 1351 |
| Total | 4,701,380 | 188,055 | 1658 |