I don’t have a rigid definition of “college town,” but I’m thinking of places like Ann Arbor MI, Madison WI, Ithaca NY, etc., where the university dominates (or so it seems to me) the cultural life of the place. If you live in a college town or have lived there within the last 10 years, could you tell me your impressions of the public transit system?
For example, I used to live in State College PA, and found the transit system (ie, the buses; I assume no American town of that size would have rail) to be clean, safe, and on time. On a routine weekday with no unusual errands, I took the bus to and from campus, and sometimes after an evening out I was able to get a bus home.
On the other hand the bus wasn’t terribly efficient, involving long waits even at the busiest stops on the edge of campus. There was also little incentive to buy a pass (if you assumed a bus ride to and from home five days a week for a semester, the pass discount was precisely 0%). Wanting convenience even at the extra cost of fuel and parking, I used my car more than I might have liked.
Transitwise, how was/is it for you? Please try to explain the good as well as the bad – I’m interested in American towns that are relatively good at public transit, if such exist.
I went to Tulane in Uptown New Orleans for undergrad school. It isn’t a real college town of course but it does have that as a small aspect of its persona. Public transportation was good in the particularly peculiar New Orleans kind of way. The streetcars ran right the front of campus through the Garden District and into downtown and then the French Quarter. The streetcars themselves are tourist attractions so it is one of the least crappy and most fun implementations of public transportation I have ever seen. There were cabs everywhere all the time as well (even though they weren’t “public”) and they were rather cheap by national standards and could be hailed or called from just about anywhere.
I went to Dartmouth in Hanover, New Hampshire for grad school. Hanover is a real college town and I never noticed any real public transportation at all except maybe for some shuttle buses meant for some unknown purpose. The campus is most of the town and you can easily walk it all. Dartmouth doesn’t tend to attract the types of students that would be enthusiastic about public transport nor would I. Students that lived off campus including myself all had cars as far as I know. The whole area is somewhat remote so I don’t see how someone could design an effective public transport system at all.
Here at UCD the only bus system is run by the university. All the drivers, dispatchers, conductors, and most of the shop workers are students. All routes start and end on campus, which is awesome and you can get a bus from almost anywhere depending on how long you need to get somewhere and from every major student-populated apartment complex or residential area. Don’t know how well the townies like it, but I see people who work downtown frequently riding to work.
University of Illinois U-C: not so great. I broke down and bought a car in 6 months. It was alright for getting around the actual school but it was hard for me to go to the movies and Target and other parts of town.
That reminds me of something else about State College: the Penn State campus divided the town north-south, and there were plenty of businesses on the north end of town and plenty of businesses on the south end, but IIRC it was impossible to get from one end to another without transferring downtown. This despite a main road (Atherton Street) that abutted campus if that’s where you wanted to go. I could understand campus being a hub, but for 100% of the routes?
Most routes have one bus an hour, and you have to go to the main terminal to change buses. There are no buses that only serve specific areas of the city; they all run from downtown to their destination and back again, and very few routes intersect for the purpose of transferring.
Whether they’re on time depends on traffic. If you miss your transfer, you have to wait an hour for the next bus. There are many places in the city you just cannot get to by bus. The majority of routes stop running at 7 PM, with limited night service. Some routes do not run on weekends. It was such a PITA to take the bus to work for five years that I gave up and started getting a ride to and from work with my wife last year.
FSU has its own bus routes to serve the campus that the public can’t use. I don’t know anything about them, though. I’ve never been on one.
Columbia, MO here. Everyone I know has a car. If you live on campus you walk to class obviously, but you’d want a car to go to the mall, parties, Walmart, etc. There is a bus that hits campus and goes to Walmart/mall but I don’t know anyone who’s taken it. Lots of kids live off-campus and drive to campus or a designated lot and park. The lots, one of which I park in, is off campus and a shuttle picks you up and desposits you on campus. It sucks kinda. But there is not enough on campus parking for everyone, not even close. Columbia has a downtown but there is nothing but bars, restaurants, and some funky shops down there, and that’s about the only place you can walk from campus. Columbia is spread out, so a car is pretty much necessary. There is a public bus system, but again, I don’t know anyone who takes it. Everyone has a car or bums rides off people constantly.
As a fellow PSU alum, I found the State College buses to be clean, inexpensive, and nearly useless.
Town is just not that big. In my experience, going to or from town by bus (even if you’re way out in East Halls trying to get to some part of downtown), the time saved is quite minimal compared to walking.
Now, if I had lived out in Toftrees or something and had to commute into town itself, then I guess I could see it. Still, I took the bus once to the Nittany Mall, which took so long that it was barely worth it. I never made that trip again.
Current PSU student chiming in. The on-campus buses (Blue Loop, White Loop, Red Link etc) are free now, if they didn’t used to be. Other than that, not much seems to have changed.
I go to school in Providence (when I’m not in Edinburgh). While I’d consider the city more than just a college town, there are an awful lot of colleges in it. RIPTA (Rhode Island Public Transportation Agency?) is ok. Being able to go anywhere in the state for 75 cents is pretty nifty. But it’s a small state, and finding out when and where the buses will run can be surprisingly difficult. There are some cool buses that look like trolleys though. Overall, I think that my hometown of Santa Monica, while not a college town, has a much better bus system.
Chapel Hill, NC has free buses, and a couple of routes that run only on/around campus. There are a few tweaks I’d make to the routes, but all in all it’s a brick house of a bus system.
Shagnasty, did you ever experience the pure transit pleasure :rolleyes: that was the Freret Jet? I took it downtown daily one summer to get to a job. Essentially it takes you the same place as the streetcar does, a bit faster and with considerably less class.
?? Doesn’t pretty much everywhere have “just busses” (small collegetownwise, I mean).
Ann Arbor has 2 bus systems – The University’s which primarily runs between Central & North Campus; and Ann Arbor’s which runs all around town.
The bus stops at the Mall and the Meijer (a WalMart-like store) as well as in most of the residential neighborhoods and downtown. Unfortunately, service is not frequent, and as I understand it the AATA system is plagued by low ridership. There’s a sort of chicken & egg dynamic there preventing the system from really suceeding.
Oh God, you didn’t take the Freret Jet did you? I thought the word had spread far and wide sufficiently so that students didn’t need to be individually warned of the consequences. I never took it myself because I don’t do buses but I once met someone that did and it sounded life-altering in a not so good way.
Gainesville has a shoddy but adequate bus system. During the major school hours it’s perfectly good for getting to and from campus, but evening schedules are awful, in my experience. The campus busses, when they’re running, are pretty decent as well, and the Later Gator service downtown to the clubs is adequate to keep a bunch of drunks off the road, but overall public transportation is pretty bad
CoMo here too. I have a car. I know a couple Co-workers of mine (we work downtown) that take the bus. Other than that, I don’t except to go from the commuter parking to campus and back.
A bike could get you from point A to point B just about anywhere in Columbia, unless you lived outside of town. The whole town is like 5 miles square.
Didn’t used to be (they were a paltry 35 cents when I attended). Do they still stop running the Loop on game days? (There was a teensy little incident where a crowd leaving Beaver Stadium overturned a bus … after we won.)
Apart from the total lack of buses on Sundays and on evenings when the university isn’t in session, and the severely reduced routes on evenings and Saturdays, it’s pretty good.
When I was at college the first time, in Morehead, KY, which isn’t exactly a “college town” but is kind of close, and the transportation wasn’t completely horrible. I had a car anyways but had to park it in the large lot at the edge of campus, so I took the bus most places.
In the town I live in now, it is ridiculously horrid. I think the closest thing we have to “semi-public” transportation is these little white buses that hold 8 people (so they are kind of large vans) and they are horribly junky. The worst part is, only one per day goes to the college, and it does one stop there a day. It’s a lot easier to have a car here. Most students choose that option.
