Dr. Carl Carlucci, vice chancellor for administration and finance for the UH System, proposed that students sign up for Metro’s Q Card at Wednesday’s Student Government Association meeting.
The card, which offers college students lucrative benefits such as a 50 percent discount on bus and MetroRail fares, represents a major step in the plan for increasing mass student transit.
However, as lucrative as this offer is and as beneficial as mass transportation can be, college students will never fulfill its potential.
As college students, we value two things above all else: money from our parents and sleep. The first has virtually no impact on this topic, unless your parents pay for your transportation. The second, however, has a greater impact than anything else.
Fellow students, imagine this: there is no snooze alarm; no dragging your feet or time to finish up that big project. You would have to wake up early everyday to catch your bus. Once on the bus, you have to find a decent seat and negotiate transfers. You hope the bus will get there on time, or else you’ll be left hoping your professor is having a really good day and feeling charitable.
Even Carlucci admits that Metro has problems.
‘(They) don’t even understand their own route schedule,’ he said.
However, Carlucci still makes his case for the system. He said UH currently has 125,000 trips to and from campus, including faculty and staff. In a decade, Carlucci says that number will rise to 160,000 and he wants at least 20,000 of those commuters to ride the METRO system. Since UH is one of the largest commuting schools in the nation and will be getting larger, parking will become a greater issue.
‘We will build more parking,’ Carlucci said. ‘It will cost us more money.’
The bus is great for the working class mass and for the environment, but is inconvenient for college students. As much as we pay to go to school, we should consider ourselves lucky that we do not mind walking all the way to our cars.