A long-planned arrangement between the university and the City of College Park to let city residents and employees ride Shuttle-UM buses will go into effect Sept. 1.

Under the arrangement – which will be tested with a pilot program – the city will pay $5,000 per semester for up to 500 city residents and employees to ride the university-operated buses, which travel to locations such as Beltway Plaza, Greenbelt and the Silver Spring Metro station.

City residents and employees without a university affiliation began registering to receive city-issued ID cards on Monday. Sarah Imhulse, the city’s project manager for the Shuttle-UM collaboration, said 57 people had signed up for cards as of Wednesday afternoon.

The city ID cards will be accepted along with university ID cards by Shuttle-UM drivers. No one with a university ID needs to apply for a separate city ID card.

Transportation Services Director David Allen described the city-university collaboration as “win-win” for the two entities: City residents can ride the buses for free, and the university will collect $10,000 annually without appreciable cost to DOTS.

“That’s $10,000 the students don’t have to pay,” he said.

The city and the university had reached a similar arrangement to let city residents ride the Shuttle-UM in 2006, after weighing in the opinions of groups such as the Student Government Association, Residence Hall Association, University Commuters Association and Graduate Student Government, some of which had initially opposed the program for safety concerns. But while compromises were reached between DOTS and student organizations, the idea was abandoned when the state told the university that opening its bus service to the public would give it “common carrier” status.

“Common carrier” services can be told to alter their routes and can face extra liability issues that DOTS avoids by keeping Shuttle-UM open only to the university community.

But recent state legislation sponsored by Sen. Jim Rosapepe (D-Prince George’s) allowed for DOTS to stay exempt from common carrier status, at which point the city and university were able to reach a “memorandum of understanding,” which the College Park city council passed last week.

District 4 Councilwoman Mary Cook, who has been pushing for this Shuttle-UM arrangement for more than three years, said she is very excited to see it coming to fruition.

“I’m telling everyone I know, and I just hope they’re all going to ride the bus with me,” she said. Although Cook said she expects city ridership to be fairly low, she sees it as only “the first step” in encouraging residents to use public transportation as part of her broader goal to reduce traffic on Route 1.

“It’s setting an example, really, that we don’t have to everywhere in our cars,” she said.The city council will review the program at the end of the fall semester to decide whether it is worth the cost. DOTS will be monitoring how many people board the shuttle using city ID cards, and Allen said the university will terminate the plan if city riders lead to overcrowding on any bus routes.

“If something happens, if we get student complaints, then it’s over,” Allen said. But he described that as a “very, very unlikely event … which I really do not anticipate. I think that people from both sides will have a good experience on the bus.”

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