Owen Downey, Olivia Mazzola, Drake Myny

WRA 101
Project 3
March 20, 2019
Project 3 Rough Draft
Word Count: 806
Project 3 Rough Draft

In the 2018-2019 school year, Michigan State University announced that they would be

providing free bus services for all MSU students, staff, and faculty. This was to be on a trial

basis for both the University and CATA (which has been the bus service at MSU since 1999).

Should the initiative be considered successful, the contract would be renewed for future use of

students. The news of free busing was good news for the students, as previously bus passes for a

semester were about $60.

Generally speaking, the free buses are extremely popular for MSU students. First-year

students, in particular, have enjoyed this new privilege as they are not permitted cars on campus.

This is made even better by the fact that this past year’s Freshman class was the largest in MSU’s

history. More buses on campus also means that older students may not want to bring their cars to

MSU, as they can use the buses and save money on parking passes, and time on finding parking

on campus.

However, due to the popularity, and the increased amount of freshman on campus, the buses

have been the victim of overcrowding. This is a huge issue for students that rely on the buses to

get to class or work. The buses being overcrowded means that students have to wait longer for

buses as there are strict limits to how many students that can fit on the bus at one time. Add to

this fact that Michigan has extremely harsh winters, severe low temperatures, and it is not only

an inconvenience to students but also a safety hazard.

This issue is also a relatively new one. In previous years, MSU’s busing system had a $60 per
semester fee. This was enough to make some students decide that their money was best spent

elsewhere. However, now that the buses are free, the issue has arisen. This is obvious because

other lines outside of the free 30 lines are not nearly as crowded as any of the free routes. This

issue is a relatively new one and spiked around the winter months when temperatures were at

their coldest.

It is our group’s belief that there needs to be something done about this issue of overcrowded

buses. To achieve this, we have come up with a few different ideas. One of which is to replace

the older models with CATA’s newer models. These models are not only more fuel efficient and

environmentally friendly, but they are also more spacious than older buses of the same size. This

solution is the best of both worlds because we are not only being green, but we are getting more

students on buses at once.

Another solution is to simply add more buses to the routes. Ideally, these would be the new

buses as well, so they have more space on them. We know that this is not going to be cheap to

add more buses to the routes. The current way that the buses are being paid for is through MSU’s

general fund. This means that there was no increase in tuition for students to be able to provide

this service. However, if more buses were to be added, MSU could partner with CATA in order

to fund these extra buses. This could be done either by building the cost into the tuition of each

student, or, alternatively, having a smaller, reduced semester pass available to students.

Our third solution is to change bus routes and take buses from the less popular routes and use

them on the more popular ones. The 31 route, in particular, is a very long route. This is also the

only bus that goes to Brody Neighborhood, where a large chunk of MSU students reside. This

solution could entail breaking up long routes like the 31 into shorter ones, therefore making the

routes more efficient. Breaking up the routes will cause the buses to be less crowded. Since the
route will be shorter this can be a great opportunity to break the 31 route into two different

routes. This will then let the Brody neighborhood have 2 different routes coming to and from.

To gain information into this issue, we have decided to contact Lolo Robinson, CATA

executive in charge of public affairs. We asked her several questions regarding the status of the

contract between MSU and CATA and the overall satisfaction of students. We wanted to

understand how, and if this test was successful for CATA. To get insight on MSU’s side of this

issue we decided to contact MSU’s Transportation Services through the Infrastructure Planning

Services. We also will be contacting MSU Sustainability to gain insight into CATA’s “Clean

Machines.” We will be asking them similar questions to what we asked CATA, but we just

wanted to see what the service was like from MSU’s perspective.