DOTS has brought back a university bus line to New Carrollton after a similar route was cut in 2003 due to low ridership.

This time around, officials from the Department of Transportation said they hope it will be more successful given the number of students who have moved off-campus.

The New Carrollton Shuttle-UM line will start its rounds in the fall, going from the campus to the New Carrollton Metro station on the Orange Line. An array of other transportation lines stop at New Carrollton, which administrators hope will make the route more attractive to students who travel outside the Washington region frequently. New Carrollton is a hub for Metro, Amtrak, Greyhound buses, Baltimore’s MARC train and Prince George’s and Montgomery counties’ buses.

DOTS will also be making minor adjustments to three existing routes — Seven Springs Apartments, Silver Spring and the Greenbelt South Route — which will make the routes more convenient for students, DOTS officials said.

Although students usually rely on getting rides from their friends when going long distances, many said that having a university bus that goes outside of Route 1 is a good idea.

“I wouldn’t mind if it were easier to get to places,” sophomore bioengineering major Pascal Young said. “But usually it takes too long to wait for a bus.”

In 2003, more students commuted from longer distances and therefore spent little time in College Park and had little need for a connector bus to New Carrollton. Once students started moving on or close to the campus en masse, the route seemed necessary again, Assistant to the Director of DOTS Beverly Malone said.

Support from student governing bodies, such as the Student Government Association and the Residence Hall Association, also gives DOTS hope that the reinstated bus line will be successful, Malone said.

“We have a lot of students that want to get to Amtrak,” she added. “The people we’ve talked to say it would be convenient to get there, it’s a general area of campus that is ill-served. Some people are interested in something that goes farther than Route 1.”

Freshman mechanical engineering major Lorin Pierson said students who live out of the state would benefit most from the route due to the fact that New Carrollton serves as a major stop for Metro and Amtrak.

“I have a lot of friends that are from Pennsylvania, so the [route] will make things easier for them,” he said.

Starting in the fall, DOTS will also be making minor adjustments to existing Shuttle-UM lines. Among the adjustments to the bus routes is a new stop to Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park. The new route was created due to high demand from students, Malone said.

Many students said having a stop at a hospital will be a good option for those who. don’t have a car, but the stop may not be used as frequently as DOTS may like.

“It would definitely be useful for someone’s who’s really sick or just broke their arm,” Pierson said. “But really people may only take one trip to the hospital once in a while, so the stop might not be that frequented.”

Other students said they thought there would be enough people that would use the bus to get to the hospital.

“It would be a good option,” sophomore computer science major Jeff Tang said. “People have nagging injuries all the time.”

The New Carrollton route will run Monday through Friday and will go from the campus to the New Carrollton Metro station, with a new bus leaving every half hour.

korkut at umdbk dot com