Ridership on the buses at Minnesota State University is up. Way up.
During the 2004-05 academic year, 160,660 riders used either the campus’ leased buses or the Red Eye Shuttle. The following year, the Maverick Shuttle was added, and ridership jumped to 185,898.
Last year, the number went up yet again, this time to 191,604, a nearly 20 percent increase from ’04-’05.
Why?
“A lot of our students are becoming more economy minded,” Cowan said. “And that’s good.”
Rising tuition and textbook prices hit students in many ways. Cowan said it’s not surprising that people are looking for a cheaper mode of transportation.
“Apparently the price of gas, among other things, has made people more conscious of finding an alternative for getting to and from campus,” Cowan said. “For that, we’re grateful.” And it’s not just students.
At a bus stop Friday afternoon near MSU’s Centennial Student Union, a handful of MSU food service employees were waiting to take the afternoon bus back downtown.
Lee Young said he catches a bus to campus early, usually before 7 a.m., to get to campus. He doesn’t have a driver’s license, and says that, without the bus, he’d have only one option.
“It’s pretty simple,” Young said. “I’d probably walk.”
Marcia Miller takes the bus, too. She says she used to have a car but now public transportation is more economical.
“I could take a cab,” she said, “ but that gets quite expensive.”
To get an idea of the impact buses have on the campus’ parking situation, Cowan points out that there are only 5,400 parking spots on campus. If all the people who took the bus drove a car to campus instead, Cowan says, it would be difficult to find a place to park.
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