| 1/6/2009 11:13:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article
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ALEX PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Laura Shiprack, 18, a Tongue Point Job Corps student enrolled in the Advanced Career Training program at Clatsop Community College, waits to catch a bus back to the Tongue Point campus Monday. Beginning this winter term, CCC students, faculty and staff are provided with free transit through a partnership between CCC and the Sunset Empire Transportation District. |
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ALEX PAJUNAS — The Daily Astorian
Gathering Monday inside a bus shelter at Clatsop Community College to celebrate the beginning of free bus service for college students, faculty and staff are, from left, Anita Hughes, CCC registrar, state Sen. Betsy Johnson, Joanne Swenson, CCC student success coordinator, Sunset Empire Transportation District board member Rae Goforth, Bob Gannaway, vice-president of the SETD board, Marcia Fenske, president of the SETD board, Cindy Howe, SETD’s executive director, Greg Hamann, president of CCC, Rosemary Baker-Monaghan, president of the CCC board, and Roger Friesen, CCC’s dean of student services. CCC and SETD entered into a partnership to provide the free bus service starting with the winter term, which began Monday. |
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Hop on the bus and take a free ride
CCC and Sunset Empire Transportation District form transit partnership
By SANDRA SWAIN
The Daily Astorian
Clatsop Community College's winter term started Monday and so did free bus service for all registered students, faculty and staff.
The free service is the product of a partnership between the college and Sunset Empire Transportation District, which operates The Bus, the brightly-colored buses that have been providing service throughout Clatsop County for more than a decade.
To ride for free, all a student needs is an I.D. card from CCC with a winter-term bus sticker attached to it. Faculty and staff need only their I.D. cards.
"We're thrilled. We think it's a great idea. This will benefit the college, the economy and the environment," CCC President Greg Hamann said. "It creates an opportunity for our students to change the way they travel here and at the same time really reduces the parking pressure that we have on this campus. It's a great campus and we don't want to take it up with cars."
The college will pay SETD a flat rate for every registered student and every faculty and staff member the college employs, Cindy Howe, the transportation district's executive director, explained. SETD has the same agreement with Tongue Point Job Corps, where about 500 students ride the bus every day. Howe said they will all be able to ride free, using regular fixed routes, which have recently been updated and expanded to better serve Knappa and South County.
Although this term is the first time for free bus service, SETD had been offering CCC students a $65 per term bus pass - a third of the regular price - for the last five years. And now, with new construction on campus eating up parking spaces for faculty and staff, the college is also paying SETD to shuttle employees from parking lots at the Red Lion Inn and the Performing Arts Center. Although the college is picking up the tab for the free service and the shuttle service, Hamann considers it a bargain compared with the $15,000 per parking space he said it would cost to build a parking structure.
"I always thought it made more sense for everyone to have access to public transportation," Howe said. "For us, it's ridership. It costs us the same whether it's two riders or 30." Howe said the SETD's ridership has increased by 25 percent since September and is now up to 5,000 rides a day. She expects an even bigger increase in the next couple of months with the free service for CCC.
State Sen. Betsy Johnson, D-Scappoose, made a trip to Astoria on Monday to be part of the kick-off event for the new bus service. She said it's good for the environment, good for the college and good for building ridership on The Bus.
"I think it's a wonderful partnership," Johnson said. "It'll move people up here expeditiously without all the parking problems, it utilizes a community resource and it alleviates the congestion up here."
Even while the free bus service proposal was still under discussion, Marcia Fenske, president of the SETD board, said college students told her they were excited about it. "There's no parking. The parking's all gone in this area," Fenske said, noting that spaces are especially scarce now that the college's major campus renovation project is underway. "We're trying to get people out of their cars and onto the bus."
As gas prices rise and the economy plummets, switching from cars to public transportation is the trend nationwide. It's especially true for college students, according to Andrew Clark in an Oct. 4, 2008, story on the ABC News Web site. College students all over the country are walking, biking and taking buses and trains to save money, Clark wrote, and college administrators are helping them by providing alternative transportation options.
Citing statistics from the American Public Transportation Association, Clark wrote that in 2007, 10.7 percent of public transit riders were students and that public transportation ridership in general increased by 140 million rides in 2008 compared to the previous year.
Howe said Sunset Empire Transportation District wants to be the model for the rest of rural Oregon and its partnership with Clatsop College is making that possible. "It means ridership to Sunset Empire, it means going green," she said. "The state of Oregon is all about going green and this is our part and we want to be a model transit system for the rest of the rural transit systems throughout the state."
Johnson said SETD is already leading the way. "It's one of those win, win, win situations and I really credit the leadership of Cindy Howe and President Hamann and their respective boards in coming to the conclusion that this kind of partnership makes good sense," Johnson said.
"This is terrific."
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