The Department of Transportation Services officials pushed back the start of a carpool program aimed at reducing the number of cars on the campus, saying they had not yet been able to hammer out the program’s final logistical details.

As a part of its new movement toward a more sustainable university, DOTS hoped to start the Terp Riders Carpool Program this semester, offering discounted parking permit rates to students and employees who carpool to the campus. But the program’s website contains only one brief paragraph thanking visitors for their interest and promising more details soon.

Many students aren’t familiar with the concept of the program, and even DOTS Director David Allen said he isn’t sure about the logistics of the program.

“It’s being postponed for us to get more details about how it will run and how it will affect the campus,” he said. “It would mean reduced parking rates, different parking lots, that kind of thing.”

For now, students seem excited but skeptical at the news of discounted parking rates.

“I feel like a lot of people would be really excited about it. It’s really expensive to keep a car on campus,” said Alison Kraus, a senior criminology and criminal justice and government and politics major. “There would definitely have to be some sort of check-in process, but I don’t know how that would work. It would be hard to control that kind of thing.”

Matt McCloskey, a junior history major who lives in University Courtyards, doesn’t think the permit is worth it for someone living in a shuttle-accessible area.

“For me, personally, I’d just take the bus,” he said. McCloskey also said the program would be difficult to monitor.

“I think any plan that tries to do that would be a waste of money,” he said. “It’s not feasible to track that many students.”

If the program debuts for the spring semester, students who already purchased a full-priced year permit would be refunded the difference in cost, Allen said.

jderbedr@umd.edu