Sustainable mobility policies at Universities: What after the pandemic?

Universities are increasingly paying attention to the topic of sustainability, pursuing since many years mobility management policies to reduce commuting by private transport modes in favour of public and active ones. The ongoing covid-19 pandemic heavily jeopardised many aspects of everyday life, including transport behaviour: this paper aims to understand how mobility management policies in universities can be reshaped by targeting different groups of users, considering the case study of Politecnico di Milano, one of the largest universities in Italy. Two surveys were conducted among its staff and students: before the pandemic (June 2019 – 10 000 answers) and during the pandemic (July 2020 – 7600 answers). Three logit models, two multinomial and one binomial, are built to investigate the characteristics of users with respect to actual and stated mobility habits, considering a set of variables common to both surveys. The designed models aim to identify the factors that motivate individuals to switch between different modes of transportation, in the pre-pandemic and during-pandemic situation. From these results, several conclusions to inform mobility management policies in the post-pandemic period are drawn: notably, the distance at which both actual car usage and willingness to use is higher shows a parabolic trend, suggesting policies should be targeted differently according to trip and users’ characteristics.