Date of Completion

2022

Document Type

Honors College Thesis

Department

Environmental Studies

Thesis Type

Honors College, Environmental Studies Electronic Thesis

First Advisor

Victor Izzo

Second Advisor

Beverley Wemple

Third Advisor

Emily Anderson

Keywords

carbon emissions, GIS, sustainable transportation, rural, urban sprawl, Vermont

Abstract

Vermont’s transportation emissions per capita are greater than the United States’ transportation emissions due to Vermont’s rural nature combined with urban sprawl. Using a Chittenden Area Transportation Management Association (CATMA) survey of the University of Vermont’s (UVM) faculty and staff’s transportation trends as a case study, I explore the theoretical changes in carbon emissions as people currently driving alone switch to a sustainable mode. Utilizing more sustainable transportation methods is essential to reducing carbon emissions enough to mitigate our current impact and reach 2030 emissions goals of both UVM and Vermont. While switching to a sustainable mode and reducing emissions is viable for most, a small subset who are unable to switch produces more than half of carbon emissions in the dataset. This issue goes beyond public transportation availability to state and city planning as well as personal motivations and other outside factors.

Comments

The full contents of this thesis are available only in the Honors College office.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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