The Lane Transit District could ax late-night buses on weekend nights next year unless students improve their behavior, LTD and bus drivers’ union representatives said Wednesday.
Brian Pasquali, an executive officer in the Amalgamated Transit Union, said drivers feel unsafe in the hostile atmosphere and “mind-bending levels” of noise drunk students create on Friday and Saturday nights. He called for the late-night service to end immediately on weekends.
LTD spokesman Andy Vobora said the 79x route will continue its late-night runs at least until next fall, but the district will decide whether to let the service continue in two weeks.
The ASUO and University administration inaugurated the service in January to protect students studying at the 24-hour library and freshmen forced to live in Stadium Park Apartments who would otherwise walk home from campus late at night. The route, which connects the University campus to the Kinsrow apartments, runs from 11 p.m. until 2 a.m.
Ensuring that late-night buses continue to serve campus has been an important issue in the ASUO this year. The student government’s final budget cut tickets to men’s basketball games to finance the service and all candidates for the ASUO presidency included continuing the service in their platforms.
From the beginning of the service, statistics showed students used the bus most on Friday and Saturday nights. Many of them were drunk. Emerald reporters riding the bus for a story in January saw students drinking from flasks, making out, swearing loudly and removing their clothes.
Pasquali said behavior has deteriorated since. “They haven’t gone so far as to threaten our drivers,” he said. “But they’ve been harassing and demeaning to our drivers and the security staff that’s on the bus now.”
Pasquali said he tried to make the union a part of discussions between the University and LTD, but was rebuffed. “I asked for a seat at that table and I was ignored and that’s what caused me to go public with this,” Pasquali said.
“We were told that this bus would be for students who were working late at night or who were in study groups,” Pasquali said. But Pasquali said weekend riders are different. “They’re the rioting-type crowd,” he said.
Nick Schillaci, the ASUO staffer who designed the late-night service, disagreed. “It’s just, you know, half-a-percent of students that are being unruly,” he said.
Schillaci said he has “seen students do some pretty questionable things” on the bus late at night. But he said he still supports keeping the late night service to prevent the drunk students from driving. “I do think that the union is unaware of the progress we’ve made and I think they might have been impulsive” in calling for an end to the route, Schillaci said.
Vobora said putting a security guard on the bus has improved student behavior. “If everything goes as it has the past weekend, then it should be ready to go in the fall,” he said.
“He’s wrong,” Pasquali said. “And he hasn’t gone out to ride the bus the way I have.”
Pasquali said he will present the union’s concerns at the district’s labor management committee meeting Thursday. He said he is unwilling to talk about what the union will do if his concerns fall on deaf ears.
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