Despite plan, still no such thing as a free ride

Thursday, November 19, 1998

Despite plan, still no such thing as a free ride

FACULTY: Parking shortage prompts Academic Senate resolution for
program to increase public transit use

By Hannah Miller

Daily Bruin Senior Staff

Faculty, staff and students are one step closer to getting a
free ride – on the bus, that is.

Hoping to improve L.A.’s air quality and reduce congestion, the
Academic Senate passed a resolution Tuesday offering a public
transit benefit for faculty, staff and students.

While the vaguely-worded proposal echoes the one written by then
Graduate Students Association’s (GSA) President Andrew Westall last
year, a pilot program on the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus could be
running as soon as next fall.

Similar transit programs are currently in place at 19 colleges
and universities nationwide, including UC Santa Cruz, San Diego,
Davis and Santa Barbara. In most cases, faculty, staff and students
show their university identification card to board buses for
free.

"All of these universities highly recommended their programs to
us," said urban planning professor Donald Shoup, making the
presentation on behalf of the Faculty Welfare committee.

"The schools that measured ridership saw it double or triple in
the first year that the program was implemented," he added.

The suggested program would provide free bus service for all
students, faculty and staff on bus lines that come to UCLA. The
BruinCard would be swiped upon boarding the bus, instead of paying
a fare.

The proposal approved by the Senate does not specify the source
of the funding, which is estimated to run anywhere from the Faculty
Welfare’s calculation of $1.3 million to the initial, high-end
estimate of $4.5 million offered by the Metropolitan Transportation
Authority (MTA).

"The proof of the pudding will be what kind of price we can
set," said Mark Stocki, head of UCLA Transportation Services.

"The MTA won’t be interested in doing it for at least two or
three years, so the Santa Monica bus line presents our best case
for a fall pilot," he added.

Funding for the benefit could come from multiple sources,
including increased parking costs, federal money, grants from the
Air Quality Management District and student fees, if students vote
to impose them.

If parking funds the entire program, permit prices will be
raised by $10 a quarter for every $1 million that Parking Services
spends, Stocki said.

Although the committee addressed air quality, congestion and
providing access to low-income students who do not own cars, the
main selling point of the transit benefit was skyrocketing permit
prices.

Fees for the two types of faculty permits have increased 145 and
240 percent in the last 12 years. This increase, several times
higher than the rate of inflation, comes from construction costs of
new parking facilities.

"The traditional role of the Faculty Welfare Committee has been
to complain about parking," said Shoup to his peers. "This time, we
decided to do something more constructive."

The purpose of the program is to reduce parking demand while
giving faculty, staff and students access to the 1,114 buses that
stop at UCLA every day, Shoup said.

But Stocki warned faculty not to get their hopes up too high. He
pointed to the 4,000-student waiting list for parking permits as
evidence that parking will always be a necessary, if painful, part
of life at UCLA.

"There won’t be a rollback of parking fees," he said.

"We must have a broad range of programs, and that includes
parking when necessary," said Stocki, whose department recently
received an award from the SCAQMD (South Coast Air Quality
Management District)for clean-air transportation policy.

Trials of the Blue Bus program are scheduled to start this
summer.

Comments, feedback, problems?

© 1998 ASUCLA Communications Board[Home]