As required by the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, Ithaca College monitors its annual greenhouse gas emissions. College-related travel contributes to these emissions, but is the most difficult source of emissions to track. Therefore, in an effort to better capture the number of travel miles covered by members of the Ithaca College community while traveling on College business, the Office of Travel Services has updated its expense report form.
The revised form now contains fields for travelers to estimate and provide the number of ground miles (driving) and air miles (flying) traveled on College-related trips. Effective immediately, we are requesting all travelers to provide mileage estimates each time they fill out an expense report form.
For more information on estimating air miles for each trip, input your origin and destination into one of the following online calculators:
To estimate ground miles, indicate your driving origin and destination using one of the following links:
Frequently Asked Questions about Estimating Traveled Miles
What if I am traveling in a group? Air miles must be calculated for every person flying, but ground miles are counted only once for a group driving together. For example, if five people flew from Ithaca to Chicago and back (1,176 air miles), then drove together in one vehicle from Chicago to Peoria and back (334 ground miles), you would multiply the air miles by five, but count the ground miles only once.
Do I have to count miles traveled in numerous short taxi or shuttle trips? If the calculation becomes difficult because of a number of short driving trips within a larger trip, exact calculations are not important. Please do your best to estimate the overall cumulative distance traveled (e.g. 10 miles through various taxi and shuttle rides).
How do bus trips count? Bus trips count the same as ground miles. If a group travels on the bus, the ground miles are calculated on a per-vehicle basis, not on a per-person basis.
We appreciate your cooperation in helping us estimate College business-related travel mileage. We realize this will require some extra effort for travelers as well as for those filling out the final expense reports. However, we wish to accumulate information as accurately as possible so that our estimates of greenhouse gas emissions for the College do not under- or overstate the situation that ultimately must be resolved as a part of our obligation under the Presidents Climate Commitment program.
Thank you.
