Sudbury college introduces carpooling to promote sustainability

Cambrian College in Sudbury is hoping students and staff will consider carpooling to reduce the school's carbon footprint and promote a more sustainable campus.

“This bike repair area that we're standing in front of is one of them, carpooling,” said Janneke Nicholls, Cambrian’s vice-president of finance, administration and applied research.

"We looked at how people got to campus, and that's how we knew that our emissions were high in this area. So there are people that bike to campus and we're trying to encourage more of that. There are people that walk (and) there's lots of people that take the bus. But we did find that there were lots of people that drove."

The school has set up 10 designated parking spots for those who want to carpool, which is defined as at least two people in a vehicle.

While there’s no separate parking pass right now, officials say the hope is to expand on the initiative in the future.

“It's on an honour system and so we're hoping that people take advantage of this. They’ll have priority parking,” Nicholls said.

Officials at Greater Sudbury said high school and post-secondary students make up a large percentage of ridership on city transit.

“Over the past two years, we've seen that, as a percentage, about 45 to 47 per cent of our ridership is students," said Brendan Adair, Sudbury's Interim GM of community development.

Cambrian College in Sudbury is hoping students and staff will consider carpooling to reduce the school's carbon footprint and promote a more sustainable campus. (Photo form video)

"For the last two years, that's over two million riders being students. We're happy to provide that service. and we can see that students do depend on it.”

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While Cambrian might not be the first college in the province to offer carpooling spots, officials from both Laurentian University and College Boreal say they are the first post-secondary institution to offer in in Sudbury.

The carpool parking spots are the latest in a series of new measures to help Cambrian reduce its carbon footprint, become a more sustainable campus and advance the UN's sustainable development goals.

The measures also include more bike racks on campus, including ones that can accommodate wide-tire and electric bikes.