Three miles from campus doesn’t sound far.
But for residents of The Cottages and The Woodlands, the relatively new off-campus student housing developments sandwiched between Nicholson Drive and Burbank Drive along Ben Hur Road, traffic poses a threat to their attendance record on a daily basis.
Many school days, the cars stopped at Burbank back up past the caboose of the line of cars simultaneously backed up from Nicholson along the three-quarter mile road stretch, almost a half-mile in either direction from the respective stop signs.
The overlap sometimes traps residents in their neighborhoods because the jammed cars can block both lanes of traffic in front of the main gates for each neighborhood.
Coastal environmental science junior and Cottages resident Jonathan Lambert said he has to leave at least 30 minutes before class starts to make it on time to 8:30 or 9 a.m. classes.
“The worst part is getting past Brightside [Lane/Lee Drive], because it takes like 20 minutes just to get out of The Cottages,” Lambert said.
Lambert takes the bus twice a week, although those who ride the Ben Hur/Burbank bus in the mornings know they’re usually packed to capacity.
“There’s people standing everywhere,” Lambert said. “There’s barely room to move.”
Business junior and Woodlands resident Kelli Langley uses the Tiger Trails smart phone application to locate buses. But many times, she and other app users see one bus parked in front of the Journalism building, presumably waiting for the other bus to return to campus before it heads out again.
“Two buses is enough, but I think they just need to run both of them all the time,” Langley said.
Students sometimes have to slip off their backpacks just to fit, she said.
Each TigerTrails bus seats 45 riders, but another 35 or 40 people can fit if they stand, said Gary Graham, director of Parking, Traffic and Transportation.
“We add a second [Burbank/Ben Hur] bus and everybody’s saying this isn’t enough,” Graham said, while stressing that the buses go where the demand lies. “If they want to put three buses on Ben Hur instead of two, then we’ve got to take one off [another route],” he said.
If Graham wants to present a valid argument for new buses to the Student Required Fee Committee, the group that regulates which fees pay for designated services, a traffic survey needs to be conducted to find where the highest demand exists, he said.
In addition to the survey, passenger count data captured by infrared beams on the steps of every bus will also factor into which buses end up on each route.
“It’s our job to make a decision that positively affects the greatest number of students,” said Taylor Cox, Student Government president and student chair of the Student Required Fee Committee.
The roughly $3.6 million cost of operating Tiger Trails is funded by the $66.20 mass transit system fee that appears on all full-time students’ fee bills under the lump sum University Required Activity fee.
But for new buses to be added to the 18-bus fleet, that fee will likely need to rise, Graham said.
This year, the Office of Parking, Traffic and Transportation pays a flat rate of about $90 per hour for each bus to First Transit, the contracted company who operates TigerTrails and Campus Transit, in addition to surcharges for part of the fuel costs.
Cox said he’s also trying to add a night bus to Ben Hur/Burbank bus route, so students who frequent the Tigerland area can have a safe ride home.
Traffic backs up on Ben Hur Road around 8:30 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012.
