The Future is Here (Buses!?)

So, this weekend there was a conference called the Future of Urbanism at U of M. Geesh, I learned some interesting things but not all of them were at the conference.

Finally after way too long (I depend on my bike for local transportation most of the year) I took the AATA bus. I have never liked going to Ann Arbor because the parking situation is awful and so decided to bypass that by taking the bus. It took a while to figure out the routes and the stops (the map is quite small and does not show all the stops) and I can see how this might off put some people, but ultimately I prevailed and figured out the route (Route 5) and the time. During the week buses arrive about every 15 minutes, but over the weekend they are once an hour, which proved to be a problem, but more on that later.

The bus trip provided an opportunity to think about the relationship of EMU and buses. You see at U of M and WCC (Washtenaw Community College) they have bus passes for faculty and students. No so at EMU. It cost U of M about $1.9 million a third of which U of M is able to get the federal government to pay, but everyone there has free use of the bus! This seems like a tremendous advantage. On the 4 trips I took there were certainly some students on the bus, although I hardly saw any other professionals. Most everyone who was riding the bus were students, the elderly, or poor people who could not afford cars. But unlike a memorable trip in LA when I tried the bus (there was a local crazy aboard and someone who was throwing up, AND the half hour trip by car turned into 3 hours by bus) was clean, nothing disruptive and people were just fine. There is no reason not to use the bus, especially is you are going to parking space starved areas like Ann Arbor or EMU. Plus, the buses are hybrid that save over 100,000 gallons of gas, plus less pollutants in the air.

There are other things that make the bus trip difficult though. For example, the lack of sidewalks makes people walk in the street, or in the spring time mud, and very few of the bus stops have any shelter: Not good in a wet and cold climate like we have here much of the year. Fixing both these problems (for example Washtenaw Blvd. is the main drag and it has very few sidewalks. A person would have to be nuts to walk on the street or ride a bike.) would go a long way to making our area more sustainable transit wise.

I hear the Pres. Susan Martin may be interested in pursuing passes for EMU (or at the least discounts), which would be a great thing. It could certainly help our parking situation. I heard at one time we did have some access thru the Rynearson Lot near the stadium, but that was disbanded by Kirkpatrick sometime back in 2003 or 4. But today we have no passes. though The Ride is not expensive ($1.25 for most) it is still a lot for a student, and does not encourage you to take the bus, rather than spending time seeking a parking space if you arrive after 9 AM. Of course you could park in the North Lot, but it is pretty far and if you have to carry something in or walk during a bad winter day, or at night, well, it just isn't that great. Pretty far from the rest of campus. Most people want to park much closer, like the Oakwood lots. (Area circled in red are the north lots. Lower left hand lots are the Oakwood lots)

I came back on Saturday on the most traveled route, #5, along Washtenaw, which also has several other problems, but keeping the focus...during the weekend the number 4 route runs only every hour, and if you miss it you do what during the next hour? So I looked around on the routes and saw that Route 4 runs every half hour, still a lot to wait, but if I ran.......so I did and just caught the bus. Pretty good for me since I still can't figure my way around AA, mostly because I have avoided it for so long. It is a nice town (if I could afford it) but without parking and other things that EMU faculty sometime feel about the place.......(another time another story).

So what can be done? Fortunately there are a few others on campus who are willing to work on this problem and the solution of getting bus passes for our faculty and staff. I am one of those people but now more (Marti Bombyk, Ethan Lowenstein, and Steven Moore) are thinking similarly. Maybe there is hope.