Nine hundred students signed the UH Green Commuter pledge for a cleaner environment, simpler parking and a little less money spent on gas when Metropolitan Transit Authority and UH teamed up Tuesday and Wednesday to teach about the public transportation Houston has to offer.
Students registered for Q-cards, a debit system implemented by Metro in 2008, at three stations around campus at the UH Green Commuter Fair. Maria Honey, auxiliary customer service coordinator for UH business services, said as enrollment grows, public transportation can help ease the stress of searching for convenient parking and appeal to a growing national interest in green solutions.
‘(We) knew this was the best time to start getting this message across,’ Honey said. ‘We want to make travelling to their workplace, their educational institution, as easy as possible.’
Though the fair is over, students can still sign up for half-price Q-cards by bringing their CougarOne cards when they sign up for a Q-card at Metro’s RideStore on 1900 Main St., Switan Emily Messa, assistant vice president of University Services, said.
Students considering the Q-cards said they hoped the buses would provide a convenient alternative to driving.
‘I don’t have a car, and I want to do stuff, go Downtown or the Galleria,’ German freshman Jessica Bauman said.
She added the buses also run near her home in Kingwood and could help her get home without calling her family.
Pre-pharmacy sophomore Carmen Leung commutes from Sugarland and said she was pleased with UH’s decision to highlight Metro’s options but hadn’t quite decided whether to sign up for the Q-card.
‘I’m thinking about it because gas is going back up, and it’s way hard to find parking,’ Leung said.
Associate professor of geology and thermochronology Peter Copeland said he uses a Q-card to ride the bus once or twice a week from Clear Lake and carpools on other days.
‘I started taking the bus when the price of gas was so high, and now I find it to be convenient sometimes,’ Copeland said. ‘It’s stressful to have to drive in the traffic, especially coming home at night. If it’s raining and five in the evening, it’s stressful, I don’t have to worry about that sitting in the bus.’
Copeland said the bus doesn’t save him quite as much money since gas prices went down and bus fares rose in November, but he doesn’t have to buy a parking permit.
Commuters can add money to their Q-cards online, but Copeland said he’s had issues in the past with his account not updating his balance.
‘Their system for adding and keeping track of your card on the Internet is pretty clunky. It’s always a couple days behind,’ he said.
In regards to Copeland’s trouble with the card, Danicel Whitaker the deputy director for Metro, said she hadn’t heard many similar complaints.
‘It seems like an isolated incident. We’re more than willing to research and find a solution. We’ve had a great response, not only from students and patrons and ride sponsors,’ Whitaker said. ‘Our web loading is the No. 1 form of loading value onto the Q-card. We have ride sponsors, we have retailers who do a lot of web transactions, so it works extremely well, very innovative.’
Honey said the Commuter Fair also included information about vanpooling with VPSI Inc., a promotion geared primarily toward faculty and staff, and has many of the same benefits as riding the bus. More information is available at www.vanride.com.
The Commuter Fair is part of the outreach during UH’s RecycleMania, a two-month recycling competition and awareness campaign that began last week, and commuters can also make e-pledges online at www.uh.edu/recyclemania to help them think about ways to save energy. UH plans to coordinate Metro and UH shuttle bus stops, study the efficiency of UH shuttles, and install a Q-card reloading station in the Welcome Center, though these plans are still in the works, she said.
Assistant professor Michelangelo Sabatino, a faculty senate representative for the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and a member of the UH Sustainability Task Force, said a positive change for the University means a positive change for the community.
‘ ‘The important dynamic that’s going on now is people are starting to think twice about using a car all the time ‘hellip; to spend more time, quality time, off the highways and more on the campus here at UH, doing things that students should be doing, like hanging out, reading, playing sports and doing everything else.’
The most important goal of the effort was to get students thinking and talking about how to improve their way of life, Sabatino said.
‘Maybe the solution is trying to find somewhere in between, where you can rely on public transportation as well as private cars . . . It doesn’t have to be ‘either, or.’ It can be more of an ‘and,” he said. ‘I think as the University administration and task force, it’s incumbent on us to think to the future, not only how to make UH a better place, but also how to make our city a better place.’
