Transit Survey
Over the past few months, CPMentorship has been diligently working to try and find a way to increase VTA ridership when transiting to school by decreasing the time it takes to get there. We first needed to figure out what the biggest problems with the existing VTA network were, and the best way to do that was to ask the students who took it.
The team created a survey, with questions asking what form of transportation the students used and what the biggest problems with the VTA network were. Ethan noticed there was no question asking how long the students’ commute was, so he manually wrote the question down in the printed surveys the night before.
We needed data soon to progress, and it was up to Ethan to find it. So, on May 28th, 2025, Ethan and his dad woke up at 7:00 AM to go to Fremont High School and hand out surveys to students. They waited at the bus stop, and when students disembarked, They rushed to ask them to fill out our surveys. Ethan and his dad had to be loud and persistent to keep the students from just ignoring them, but even so, they were only able to get 4 surveys that morning. they were not discouraged, though, and will continue to hand out surveys all throughout the week.
While handing out surveys, Ethan also took careful note of when the buses arrived and how many students they carried. His notes are as follows:
1st bus around 7:25, 1 student
2nd bus around 7:35, 2 students
3rd bus around 7:49, 12 students
4rd bus around 7:51, 10 students
5th bus around 8:05, 20 students
6th bus around 8:05, 15 students
7th bus around 8:15, 25 students
8th bus around 8:16, 20 students
The reason for the sometimes-inconsistent timing of the buses is because not all of them were from the same line.
While Ethan was helping students fill out surveys, he noticed a few problems. The surveys went on for far too long, and a few of the questions seemed redundant. For example, the survey asked for the country and state, when the project is limited to California.
In the future, we plan to increase our survey output by enlisting the help of CPMentorship members that go to Fremont High School. They can ask their friends to fill out the survey, or help hand out the survey as soon as school ends.
