Southwestern connecticut commuters expend more than a minimum oftime and effort to get to work each day. Increasing traffic congestion along the state's "gold coast" (so termed because of its clusterof high-income towns and corporate headquarters) and its accompanying strain on air quality and lifestyle have mobilized the public andprivate sectors to begin to seek effective solutions to the problem. The southwestern connecticut commuter transportation study was conducted to better understand the connecticut commuter and to develop effective programs to move commuters out of their single-occupant vehicles and into alternative forms of commuting. At the time of this survey, connecticut had no trip reduction ordinances or other catalyst in place to move employers toward implementing comprehensive transportation demand management programs at the worksite. With the 1990clean air act amendments, southwestern connecticut, as a severe nonattainment area for ozone, will require employers to implement trip reduction programs and to increase the average passenger occupancy of vehicles arriving at their worksite by 1996. Basic information on commuter attitudes and practices is necessary to develop programs that will attain this significant shift in commuter behavior. This paper appears in transportation research record no. 1321, Rideshare programs: evaluation of effectiveness, trip reduction programs, demand management, and commuter attitudes 1991.
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