Tuesday, April 14, 1998
Use public transit to stop parking woes
BRUINCARD: Fare-free program would allow more commuting students
to take buses to UCLA
By Andrew Jon Westall and Brian Taylor
As the co-author of the BruinCard Bus Pass Pilot Project
Proposal for the 1998-99 academic year, I would like to address
Tiffani Chin’s comments in the Daily Bruin ("It’s not the fare that
keeps us off the bus," April 7). To begin, I wholeheartedly agree
with most of her comments, but with a few important exceptions, the
most important of which is the problem of cars and traffic in
Westwood. Put simply, too many people drive to campus, and Chin
feels that parking is the key to unraveling our traffic mess.
Parking is an unattended mess at UCLA. Chin’s comments go
straight to the point: Most people cannot get a daily permit after
7:30 in the morning. There are also 3,500 students on the waiting
list for a quarterly parking permit, leaving 10 percent of the
student population without a space on campus. And according to
Parking and Transportation Services, there will be a decrease in
parking spaces on campus over the next five years. That’s right:
Less parking! Although two expensive new structures are being built
under the soccer field and between the Men’s Gym and the Dance
Building, the demolition of Parking Structure 14 to make way for
the new hospital will reduce total parking on campus. Even after
the hospital and associated underground parking is completed, UCLA
will lose 900 parking spaces.
What’s the solution? We could try to build more parking. But, as
we all are aware, there is little open space left on campus to
convert to parking. And new parking on campus is staggeringly
expensive, well over $100,000 for each space. This leaves us with
perhaps the greatest transportation dilemma of UCLA’s history: How
do we transport growing numbers of students, staff and faculty to
our campus? Building more costly parking is simply not the answer.
But UCLA could be doing much more to encourage commuting to campus
by other modes, such as public transit.
This is why the Graduate Students Association and the
Undergraduate Students Association have proposed that UCLA do what
other traffic congested campuses around the country have done –
provide students with fare-free public transit. Giving UCLA
students free access to the Santa Monica Big Blue Bus (50 cents),
the MTA buses ($1.35), the Culver City Municipal Buses (65 cents)
and the LADOT Commuter Express buses will make it easier for
students to ride transit to campus. And with more students riding
transit to campus, the bus companies will have to increase service
to accommodate the increase in demand. And improved service, in
turn, will encourage even more UCLA commuters to ride transit and
leave their cars at home.
When a transit agency contracts with the university to provide
fare-free transit passes, each party benefits. The transit agencies
benefit from a secure source of revenue and increased ridership.
Students benefit from reduced transit costs and, more importantly,
because increased transit ridership to campus will cause transit
agencies to improve service to campus. Thus, the financial and
ridership benefits of fare-free transit for students give the
transit companies the incentive they need to cater to the transit
needs of students.
In addition, bear in mind that not all students have access to
cars and not all students travel to and from campus. Under the
proposed fare-free program, students who depend on public transit
for most of their travel needs (some of whom come from low-income
families) benefit from both the reduction in costs and the
improvement in service. In addition, fare-free transit will not be
limited to and from campus. Students will be given free access to
all of the transit services from campus to their end destinations
by the contracting transit agencies. Trips to work, to the beach,
to the Getty Center, and elsewhere will be free as well. Thus, the
fare-free pass is an unlimited access pass for students. A free
fare removes the initial barrier to riding the bus as well. These
passes have been successfully implemented at many other
universities, including UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz and UC Davis,
and the students at these schools have come to see free student
access to public transit as a right. Why drive for all trips when
parking can be expensive or difficult to find? Why not take the bus
for free instead?
Not everyone will be able to take full advantage of the
fare-free transit pass, and many students will continue to drive.
But it will only take a relatively small shift in travel behavior
to dramatically ease the parking crunch at UCLA.
Chin is right that it is not the fare that keeps most students
off the bus, but free fare is the first step to trigger a
progressive line of actions that the university can take to solve
the transportation dilemma here on campus. As Chin notes, at some
point she got fed up with the parking situation on campus and
"braved" public transit. In fact, she even likes it! The Santa
Monica Big Blue Bus gets her to campus in 14 minutes, with fewer
hassles and traffic congestion worries. The fare-free transit pass
will make it easier for more students to "Find A Better Way To
UCLA," and keep Parking Services from unnecessarily paving paradise
and putting up another parking lot.