Using Health Behavior Theory and Relative Risk Information to Increase and Inform Use of Alternative Transportation

One of the main goals of the Virginia Tech (VT) Alternative Transportation Department is encouraging the VT community (including students, faculty, and staff) to walk, use the bus, carpool, or ride bicycles for alternative transportation to decrease dependency on vehicle use and traffic around campus and increase overall safety. This project develops an intervention and education program to encourage alternative transportation to, from, and around campus to reduce campus traffic. In addition, since there is currently no standardized approach for computing the injury rates for non-vehicle roadway users, this project also refines and assesses a methodology for estimating injury rates for pedestrians and pedalcyclists, which was used to inform the developed educational alternative transportation safety course.