Thursday, March 27, 2008
The upcoming student referendum, scheduled for April 9 and 10, could feature three transportation proposals. Students will have the chance to vote on free bus rides, an expansion to Safe Ride’s operating schedule, and maintaining the current number of KU busses.
All three proposals passed through the fee review board, the student rights committee and the senate finance committee Wednesday night, and if they pass through the full Student Senate next Wednesday, students will have the chance to decide for themselves.
Jessica Mortinger, Hays senior and Parking and Transit intern, right, talks with Mohamed Basic, Sarejavo, Bosnia, about signing a petition to charge all students $20 per semester through student fees instead of selling bus passes. Basic said he declined to sign the petition because he rarely uses the bus system. The new plan would make buses open to all students with a KUID.
Here’s a breakdown of the proposals KU on Wheels and Safe Ride are pushing through senate.
FREE BUS RIDES PROPOSAL
If students pass this proposal, they would be able to ride any campus bus for free, but their transportation would increase $40.
Students who buy a $140 bus pass would each save $100 next year, but students who don’t plan on riding the bus like Kirsten Oschwald, St. Louis junior, who lives in Jayhawk Towers, would still have to pay the $40 fee.
“I’ve been at KU for two-and-a-half years now and I’ve only been on the bus once,” she said. “I would probably ride it more if it was free, but I definitely wouldn’t want it added to my student fees.”
Amanda Williams, Leavenworth senior, who has ridden the bus for five years, said she thinks universal access to busses would be worth the $40 fee.
“I would vote yes because $140 is a lot of money and after being in school for five years like I have, it adds up,” she said. “I’d rather pay $40 and not get a bus pass than pay $140 for a pass.”
Donna Hultine, director of the KU Parking Department, said her department would also invest $1.4 million into the program, which she said would help decrease parking congestion on campus.
“I think it will benefit those who drive cars because hopefully more students will choose to take a bus to campus so parking lots should have plenty of space available,” Hultine said in an e-mail. “They’ll also be able to get around campus on free buses rather than trying to move and park their cars.”
If the universal access program were to pass, KU Parking and Transit expects its annual revenue would increase $365,000. Jessica Mortinger, former KU transit coordinator who is now on the transit committee, said that amount would all be spent on operating more busses to account for the increase in riders.
According to statistics provided by the registrar’s office and the KU Parking Department, 22 percent of the student body bought a bus pass this year.
Hultine said she expects the number of students who ride busses would jump to 42 percent if students pass the bill.
The Parking Department and KU on Wheels based this projection off of research they’ve conducted at Iowa State and Texas A&M, which both saw a 20 percent rider increase when they adopted universal bus access programs.
SAFE RIDE EXPANSION PROPOSAL
Safe Ride wants to start operating three cars at 7 p.m. and eliminate the Night Campus Express, which Jessica Mortinger, transit committee member, said students rarely use.
Safe Ride is asking students to pay $3 extra in fees next year in order to make this change happen. Students currently pay a $20 annual Safe Ride fee.
MAINTAIN CURRENT BUS OPERATIONS PROPOSAL
KU on Wheels needs more money to keep up with increasing energy costs and it’s asking students to help foot the bill.
If students want KU on Wheels to keep operating the current number of busses next year, students will have to pay an additional $12.40 per year in student fees.
The fee would have originally been $18 per year, but Wednesday night’s fee review committee haggled it down to $12.40.
Jessica Mortinger, transit committee member, said that if students don’t approve the fee, the department will have to cut down on the number of busses it currently operates while eliminating and rearranging some of its routes.
Another expense KU on Wheels will face is an upcoming contract change in December, which Mortinger said could be more expensive than the one it has now.
Details about the specific companies bidding for the contract are classified until December when the decision is made, but the five-year contract will deal with bus operations, maintenance and storage. The contract the department has now is with MV Transportation.
— Edited by Jared Duncan
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Comments
Students decide on transportation
When a service is offered to a population for free, that service is overused. I hope that the current bus pass users who think it would be nice to have "free" bus rides at a $40 increase in student fees to the student body realize that they will have a harder time getting on the bus.
What will happen as a result of this high demand is that KU on Wheels will need to increase the number of buses to compensate and then increase the fee again.
Students decide on transportation
Plus if we do this, MV will remain incompetent and keep asking for more money, no matter how much we give them.
It is absolutely not fair to ask some students to pay for "free" buses when some students, like myself, couldn't ride the bus if they wanted to.
I wish everyone could get free food at the underground, but to have everyone pay for it just because I want it is selfish.
Students decide on transportation
We're already going to purchase 2 or 3 new busses a year, with the fee we raised last year. Capacity will continue to rise, as long as we keep the bus acquisition fee. I hope that at the current rate of 2 or 3 busses a year, we will be able to keep up with this rising demand.
I would also like to remind folks that the reason we are having to bail out the bus system in the first place is because it is relatively new. Sure we've had busses on campus for 30 years, but the busses we have now were purchased by the university. MV Transportation bid lower than the Lawrence Bus Company to provide the same service. Of course there is going to be a rocky startup when you switch companies. The rates this year were also higher due to the fact that they bought 6 new Toyota Priuses for the SafeRide Program, and that there was a mis-calculation in the Lift Van contract. These things were worked out. I'm sure that once we sign the contract with MV for 5 years, we'll be doing alright. Need I remind you that MV Transportation operates the T bus system in Lawrence, and while ridership is deathly low, I do not see any problems with the way they operate that system.
I hope that students pass this fee. Even though I don't ride the bus, I don't like seeing how many students drive to class. I also think that in the near future, when gas reaches $5, $6 a gallon, we will be glad that we have this in place so that students can save money by riding the bus.
Students decide on transportation
As more buses are purchased, I would hope that some of the older ones that are being replaced are decommissioned. Even if this is not the case, capacity will only increase by a load of 3 buses per year. We are talking about what is projected to be a 100% increase in the number of people utilizing buses: If about 20% of the student body is using buses now (over 5,000 people) and we are expecting an increase to roughly 10,000, 3 buses a year will not cover the increase even if it happens at a rate of only a few percentage points of increased bus demand per year.
It is unfair to ask the entire school to pay for something that people are already paying for themselves. Bus capacity will need to nearly double if we make student fees pay for the entire bus system because so many more people will be utilizing them. This will in turn create more fee increases until the cost of getting a bus pass now is comparable to the cost of the fees that you are planning to cover this with.
And as for your final point, you might not like to see students drive themselves to class, but I'm sure those students appreciate being able to utilize their own vehicles. On the other hand, drivers might be extremely annoyed by the buses, which are difficult to see and drive around when they are in the vicinity of campus. Either way what each side thinks of the other is a moot point.
Students decide on transportation
sjschlag, I find it interesting that you are so trusting of the privately owned MV bus corporation. In my opinion, the school should have gone with the more expensive contract. Maybe it was more realistic. This is why lowest bidder contracts usually fail and we should let them. Why? To prevent business contracts like this from happening in the future and punish those who lie about service in order to get the deal. Don't be a tool and side with incompetence.
The business practices of MV inc. have been featured in Journal World on several occasion and my personal experience there will attest to their shady practices especially when it comes to maintenance and the safety of the riders. This is a bad deal and the students will pay for it. Their ignorance will fuel those buses to continue rolling.
Before we had a choice to support the buses but now we are forced to subsidize them. I refuse to get on a bus that continues to inefficiently run. Half the time I see three going down the street at once, most of the time empty. Does that represent environmental soundness to you, or even any form progress? We had buses on campus before and they were forced to correct the mistakes in their scheduling, now they can do whatever the hell they want. Now you want us all to pay $40 to continue these practices! That's not any sort of intelligent thinking. Face it, you want a cheaper bus for yourself.
Students decide on transportation
How bout Mopeds, why don't we subsidize those? Who are you to say that the buses are the best way?
Students decide on transportation
To address your idea of subsidizing mopeds, That would be the most inefficient way to get students on to campus ever. the reason we have buses is because they hold about 80-100 people a bus. think about that. One bus equals 80-100 mopeds. There simply is not enough room on campus for 80 to 100 mopeds or 80-100 personal vehicles.
Perhaps I haven't been paying enough attention to what MV transportation is really doing. If they truly are lying about how much the service costs, we could take them to court and sue them. We relied on their projections, and also those of the LBC, and maybe we should have gone with them, maybe we shouldn't. You can make all of the projections you want about ridership and the cost of running the service, but invariably those figures change when you begin to operate the service. There are simply too many variables to consider when you change a transportation system like we have, we took a system with outdated buses and had to get new ones, which the university purchased. LBC owned the old buses we had, which barely ran and sometimes couldn't even make it up the hill. The newer buses are still not new, but we are getting 3 buses. Maybe 3 a year is not enough. I would like to remind you that these are merely projections, and may indeed be a little liberal. We will have to see how the student body reacts to having a fare free bus system before we can determine if additional buses will be required, but I'm sure that when all of the tweaks are worked out of the system, it will operate more efficiently and carry even more students than the old one did.
Lastly, as a cyclist I have a reason to resent people driving on campus. I think that people do value the convenience of driving their personal vehicle to school. However, I would like to ask, is it really that convenient? is it really going to be worth it to pay for the $4 to $5 a gallon gas just to drive your personal vehicle to campus and park it 500 feet away? Also, do we really want to build the parking lots and parking structures on central campus necessary to handle more people driving? I think not. Busing students from their place of living to campus helps to eliminate that cost. I'd much rather see my student fees going to subsidize a bus system than to destroying our beautiful campus because we have to build more parking garages so everyone can drive their car to school. Need I also remind you that many of our roads are at capacity as it is?
What I'd really like to see are trolleys or streetcars on campus. That would be way cooler than buses. They also run off of electricity! Maybe we should figure out a way to build those.
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