Transit Survey 2

By: Ethan Cheung

On May 29, 2025, Mia, Selina, and Ethan returned to Fremont High School with printed surveys in hand and a new plan. Our goal? To collect student responses for CPMentorship’s transportation survey, a project focused on understanding how students get to and from school, and how we might make those commutes safer and more efficient.

Ethan had tried distributing surveys in the morning as students arrived on campus, but that didn’t go well. Most students rushed straight toward the campus, leaving little time to stop and fill out a survey. As the school started, even those who might want to help chose instead to get to class on time. Ethan collected just 4 responses that day. The lesson learned is: surveys don’t work when your audience is in a hurry.

This time, we flipped our approach: instead of catching students as they arrived, we waited until school let out. We stood around the lawn outside of the school and later the bus stops, where students were sitting for a rest, or waiting for their rides home. With more time on their hands and less pressure to go somewhere, students were more willing to participate.

The improvement was immediate. We went from collecting 4 surveys last time to 14 surveys in a single afternoon. The higher response rate gave us more data points across a wider range of student commuters, and will bring us closer to our goal of understanding real transportation needs.

The key difference this time was timing and location. Rather than interrupt students during a rushed moment, we approached them when they had downtime. This not only led to more completed surveys but also more thoughtful responses.

With the surveys collected, our next step is to manually input the data and begin our analysis. We’re one step closer to understanding the transportation system for Fremont High students.