Alternative Fuel Vehicles on Campus and Ohio Wesleyan Public Transport Potential
Christopher Sluyter (cmsluyte@owu.edu)
Pooja Goswami (ppgoswam@owu.edu)
Summary:
Ohio Wesleyan University spends about $43,000 on gas per year, which is roughly the tuition of an Ohio Wesleyan University student not receiving financial aid. This project centered on examining the different vehicles that Ohio Wesleyan University owns and uses – their make, usage frequency, fuel used to run them – and the different measures that can be taken to make them more environment-friendly. IN conjunction with that, this project finally studies what practices can students and faculty members of OWU adopt:
- to reduce dependency on gas-guzzling vehicles, and
- to embrace a more comprehensive and environment-friendly program.
This may include:
- Developing public transportation for OWU students and faculty like buses and shuttles.
- Increasing support for communal bike programs like the Bike Movement at OWU.
- Promoting environment-friendly practices like carpooling among students who commute and faculty members who live in close vicinity.
- Converting the campus-owned vehicles into environment-friendly forms (electric, hybrid, etc).
In order to make OWU a greener campus and contribute to Rock Jones’s seven goals of climate commitment, we decided there must be alternatives to using petroleum-run vehicles. There are many alternative fuel options for OWU owned vehicles. Some of them are biodiesel vehicle conversion and solar panels for golf carts. There are also several options for alternate transportation for students, for instance the Delaware bus system, Delaware Area Transit Agency (D.A.T.A.) and the communal bike movement which was proposed this semester.
We researched several alternate fuels for campus vehicles, and like the previous proposal of Sydney Patrick, found biodiesel to be, by far, the most efficient in all aspects, which led to the decision that it should be made into the main proprietor of propulsion for OWU’s engines. The easiest and cheapest way of acquiring fuel for such a method of alternate energy would be to acquire vegetable oil from our food services as well as from local fast food restaurants on Sandusky Street and elsewhere in Delaware.
We had some difficulty measuring the number of students driving on campus but found that there are more students who drive in the winter as opposed to the summer. The close proximity of student residences around Delaware makes it difficult for us to develop a shuttle system which could cater to all students keeping in mind the times of their classes. Furthermore, it may sometimes take the same time to drive from the Smith Hall parking lot to R.W. Corns Building as it takes to walk it.
Methods & Results:
We started the project by contacting Public Safety office because they have the most visible use of vehicles on campus. Since it took some time for Bob Wood, Director of Public Safety to get back to us, we realized that we need to start contacting various campus offices weeks in advance to allow them adequate time to get back to us. Following this, we emailed Student Life and Residential Life. We soon realized we could not be too hasty and need to take this step by step, especially because such departments are usually extremely busy and responding to students’ questions and helping with student projects was not part of their job descriptions. We called Buildings & Grounds to narrow the exact person to contact for our project and then contacted several administrative personnel from D.A.T.A.
Ohio Wesleyan University
We found out that there are 30 registered Ohio Wesleyan vehicles. On average about 50% of OWU vans are rented everyday, which is about 4 a day, leaving 3 dormant.
Delaware Area Transit Agency (D.A.T.A.)
DATA bus runs from Mondays to Fridays only. The earliest bus is at 5:30 am and the last bus leaves at 7 pm. The fare for students is $0.50 each way so the total trip for OWU students to and from super Wal-Mart on 23 and/or Polaris is only $1. The fare for other bus users is $1 each way. There are three routes:
- Green route schedule that goes from Delaware to Wal-Mart at Delaware Plaza, Super Wal-Mart on US Route 23 and Polaris.
- Blue route schedule
- Red route schedule
The detailed schedule and routes used by DATA bus can be found in the following website:
http://www.ridedata.com/FixedRoutesJanuary2009.pdf
D.A.T.A. does not go to Columbus but D.A.T.A. can be used to access COTA (Central Ohio Transit Authority) at the Crosswoods Park-N-Ride. There is an agreement between DATA and COTA to accept each others transfers so transferring from DATA to COTA does not cost any additional fare.
DATA currently operates 16 vehicles of the following types:
