The Bowie Park and Ride, Burtonsville Park and Ride and Laurel Park and Ride, which primarily serve faculty and staff, will be discontinued Oct. 12.
University officials said that after 10 years in service, three Shuttle-UM routes will no longer be available to riders starting Oct. 12.
The Bowie Park and Ride, Burtonsville Park and Ride and Laurel Park and Ride, all of which circulate once in the morning and once in the afternoon, will be cut from the DOTS budget in order to cover the costs of the more popular Shady Grove route, Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen said.
The Laurel, Bowie and Burtonsville bus routes cost DOTS more than $60,000 combined to operate annually, according to the department’s announcement ending the service. Those funds will go toward improving the efficiency of the Shady Grove route, which occasionally requires sending out “clean up” buses to pick up riders who are left behind by full buses, according to the announcement. The Shady Grove route, which primarily students use, has more than twice the ridership of the other three combined, DOTS officials said.
For the week of September 3, the Burtonsville Park and Ride had 152 riders, the Bowie Park and Ride had 104 and the Laurel Park and Ride had 73, while the Shady Grove route had 1,986, DOTS Assistant Director Beverly Malone said.
Malone said the increase in ridership was significant enough for the department to require additional buses.
“The budget is based upon the expenses. There’s nothing left over,” she said. “It’s a penny-for-penny process — in terms of Shady Grove we had to send additional buses because the other ones being used weren’t enough.”
According to DOTS, primarily faculty and staff ride the Bowie, Burtonsville and Laurel routes. However, riders of the canceled routes have organized a petition to send to DOTS officials in hopes of getting the decision reversed.
“I understand that there’s a problem at Shady Grove, but we all need to be able to get to the university,” said junior English major Kim Osterhout, who wrote the petition.
Osterhout added that she wished DOTS had notified the university community of the change sooner.
“I think it was rather irresponsible of DOTS to tell us about the cancellation this late in the semester,” she said. “They left us very little time to find an alternate form of transportation — we have less than a month.”
Once the buses stop running, Malone said, students and university staff will need to rely on other public transit or DOTS-operated carpool programs such as vanpools and Zimride.
This is not the first time in recent months DOTS has had to eliminate routes.
The department planned to discontinue what was once the 113 route to Graduate Hills and other Hyattsville locations over the summer, but created a new bus line with the same number in order to meet student needs, Malone said.
The housing community that sponsored the bus had cut funding, so DOTS increased the student mandatory fee to cover the costs.
Francisca Cortes, who works in the university’s education abroad office, said she viewed the routes as a benefit of working for the university.
“In my case, I know big-time it will hurt financially,” she said, “And time-wise, the only alternative is driving because where I live in Clarksville there is no transportation.”
Without the bus, Cortes will need to leave her home between 5 and 5:30 a.m. and return between 8 and 8:30 p.m. She also said she was worried about the university accommodating more drivers after the routes are cut.
“Now if I’m driving, will they have plenty of spaces?” Cortes said. “When everyone wants to come and leave at the same time, with more cars there will be more time for everyone.”
University Relations employee Joyce Moss said she will need to rearrange her work schedule and may ask to borrow her daughter’s car daily to make it to work on time.
“This bus is the only way I have to get to work,” Moss said. “This is so much more convenient and they haven’t given us any alternative.”
