Today, I break one of my more long-standing traditions at the Emerald: I’m writing about something with one of the central reasons being because it annoys me on a personal level.
That is, I live at Stadium Park Apartments, and my typical ride home — the 79x route — doesn’t run during the University’s summer session. So when the clock strikes 10:32 p.m., my last option at a Lane Transit District bus ride home (the EmX, with a transfer to the 13) starts rolling away. And on Sunday, it’s even worse, with the last 13 leaving Eugene Station around 7:30 p.m.
I’m not taking summer classes this year, choosing to focus instead on the summer weekly edition of the Emerald and making a point of spending time at home in what will probably be my last summer as I’ve traditionally had it. But that still means I have to make my way to campus at least once a week and get back to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard at Kinsrow Avenue somehow in the evening.
I know I’m not the only Kinsrow-area resident working this summer on or around campus, and there’s definitely a sizable chunk of summer classes-taking students that’s growing each year.
So why isn’t the 79x route open at all during the summer?
I can understand the logic of it not being the way it is during the school year. During the school year, hundreds catch that bus every hour, regularly filling LTD’s double-size buses to near-capacity. Obviously, there is not the sheer amount students here during the summer that there are September to June and to advocate continuing the about every-15-minute service would be silly.
Even every half-hour might be just a bit much.
But why can’t there be, at the very least, a once-an-hour 79x bus — Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. — to help make sure students, taking summer classes or working and living at Chase Village, Duck’s Village, etc., have a safe, reliable ride home?
Obviously, there would be some logistical things to work out; full rollout couldn’t begin until after testing how much such a bus would be used. One option is to try out something that was proposed during the ASUO’s negotiations with LTD a couple years ago. First, have students who would use the system request a sticker of some sort for their University ID in order to use the bus over the summer to find the aggregate number of students interested in the bus.Then, start a two-week trial version of that bus, where the hourly usage rate is being tracked by bus drivers in some way.
This raises the other logistical problem: It will take more bus-driver hours (and probably more drivers) to account for more buses, and that’s a large potential increase in the funding we give to LTD through student fees. And I don’t want to stress out bus drivers more than they already are with transporting students.
But University of Oregon students have already proven they can work directly with the bus service to effect change.@@http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/affect-versus-effect.aspx@@ My freshman year, when the late-night 79x service was threatened to be cut due to accusations of poor student behavior, then-ASUO President Sam Dotters-Katz organized students to improve their behavior — culminating with an protest where students rode the bus quietly in suit and tie and with “highbrow reading matter.” And, to this day, the bus carries students during the school year, Monday to Saturday, until 2:30 a.m.
So, it’s not an easy fix, by any means, but it’s really something that we should be doing. When the Safe Ride and Designated Driver Shuttle services get crowded and their lines busy, a 40-minute trudge in the dark of Autzen’s shadow shouldn’t be the only remaining option.