Graduate students angered by transit cuts

Correction appended

The University’s announcement last Thursday that it was reducing services of the TigerTransit system has been met with criticism from many graduate students who regularly depend on the shuttle service.

In addition to fewer buses running during the day, the On-Demand service now ends an hour earlier, at 2 a.m., and the Saturday Shopper and Saturday Campus Connection lines have been discontinued.

Director of Transportation and Parking Services Kim Jackson explained that the cuts were absolutely necessary for financial reasons.

“If we had not implemented the changes by Monday, April 13, we would not have had sufficient funds to provide service for the remainder of the year,” Jackson said.

The Saturday cuts in particular have triggered a wide response from graduate students on campus. Yan Lau GS has created an online petition to bring back the Saturday Shopper line which stopped at Windsor Green Shopping Center, Wegman’s and Wal-Mart.

“Other than [the shuttle], if you don’t have a car, there is no way to access the shopping area,” Lau said.

Hannah-Louise Clark GS also asked graduate students upset by the changes to e-mail her about their concerns and has received around 40 responses since Tuesday.

“There’s not really any serious place to get groceries in the middle of town,” said Jacob Mackey GS, one of the students who signed Lau’s petition. “I really counted on being able to get to Whole Foods and Wegman’s.”

Mackey also said he was concerned about the earlier closing time for On-Demand services. The “D-bar,” located in the Old Graduate College, is a popular gathering spot for graduate students and closes at 2 a.m. Mackey, who works until closing time, said he no longer has transportation back to his apartment.

“On-Demand was nice because [the bus] would show up at 2:15 a.m. and take everyone home,” he said. “Now, you have to wonder if people will drive drunk.”

Students also said they were unhappy that the campus-wide e-mail announcing the cuts came only two days before the changes went into effect.

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Graduate Student Government (GSG) press secretary Anne Twitty noted she was disappointed that Saturday transportation, which began in January, was terminated so soon after its conception.

Jeff Dwoskin GS, co-chair of the GSG facilities committee, said that he was frustrated the GSG was not contacted in advance about the TigerTransit cuts. He added that the GSG was told the cuts had been made quickly, leaving no time to contact them earlier.

“Kim Jackson made clear to us that these changes were kind of out of her control, and that it certainly wasn’t her preference to announce them so abruptly,” Twitty added.

In response to the multitude of student complaints about the TigerTransit cuts, Jackson said that while the concerns are understandable, the changes were unavoidable.

“Continuing the weekend services would have meant not having enough funding for any services in May, and therefore not being able to provide service to primary locations, such as classes and offices,” Jackson said. “We felt it was better to scale back some of the services rather than disrupt all of the services.”

But the TigerTransit service had been “losing control” for a while, Mackey said.

“It seemed like every week they’d try to jiggle the schedule to handle the load,” Mackey said, noting that the shuttles would often fill long before they reached many of the graduate housing complexes.

While understanding that cutbacks are necessary, Twitty said the best way to conserve on spending would have been to “study ridership data to see what’s not being used.”

Mackey said he felt the new TigerTransit system was “a little bit over the top” when it was first implemented.

“There were so many shuttles, it was almost too convenient,” Mackey said. “I loved it, but I was also thinking how many shuttles were running on campus, and how many of them were empty.”

Nevertheless, Lau said he worried the elimination of Saturday shuttles would hurt sustainability efforts. The existence of shuttles “implies that the graduate students taking them won’t be bringing cars on campus,” he explained.

“I understand that [the University has] these financial constraints, but I also feel that this should be one of their priorities if they are really true about being sustainable and caring about the welfare of their students,” Lau added.

As the GSG prepares a response and petitions continue to circulate, Clark added a plea to graduate students with cars..

“If you see some poor person battling the elements,” Clark said, “please offer them a lift.”

Correction:

An earlier version of this article misspelled the name of GSG facilities committee co-chair as Jeff Dwoskin.