Students taking the University View bus will now be required to show a View ID before boarding, excluding many off-campus students who use the bus to commute to the campus.

The Department of Transportation Services decided to enforce the rule after the apartment building’s residents complained to View staff about bus overcrowding. The View pays DOTS $76,440 a year to fund the bus route for their residents, and property manager O. T. Warren said he thinks View residents should have priority on the buses.

“The goal is to make the buses exclusive for our residents,” Warren said. “We want to make everything convenient for our residents.”

The View sent out e-mails to students to inform them they needed to have their View ID cards before riding on the bus this week. Signs were also posted outside of bus stops Friday.

Management from the View approached DOTS about the student complaints and the department supported the idea to limit the route to View residents, Director of the Department of Transportation Services David Allen said.

“You’re paying for it,” Allen said. “Your students should be able to use it.”

Junior biochemistry major Charlotte Higgins lives off-campus and depended on the University View bus to get to class. Higgins, who lived in the View last semester, said she never saw the bus turn anyone away before and said the overcrowding problem was nothing new, having sat through many crowded bus rides while she lived there.

Higgins didn’t buy a parking permit this semester because she had counted on the View bus as the easiest and cheapest way to get to the campus. Now, she will have to wake up at 6:50 a.m. to walk to her 8 a.m. class.

“If my school is encouraging me to go green, wouldn’t they want people to take the bus?” Higgins said. “Now people will be driving vehicles – unless they expect people to bike or ride a scooter. It just doesn’t make any sense.”

Allen said he didn’t think the now-excluded students would overflow other buses. He said they will probably just end up walking or could wait a little longer to catch the Campus Connector South Shuttle-UM bus route or the Route 1 Corridor bus, which run every 30 minutes.

“It is a huge hassle with getting work done,” junior elementary education major Brittany Debelius, who lives off-campus, said. “I don’t want to be sitting and waiting for a bus when I should be back at my house doing homework.”

Debelius lives off of Berwyn Road and her classes are in the education building, which makes for about a 1.5 mile walk. And that’s just one way.

“I rely on the bus system to get to campus,” Debelius said. “It’s more convenient to walk to the View than waiting an hour for the other buses.”

Debelius has no other way to get to the campus. If Debelius can’t use the View bus, she will have to get to class an hour early or walk a half-hour to the campus, she said.

“It bothers me because it’s a UM bus,” Debelius said. “We should have equal privileges to all buses.”

But some View residents said they didn’t have a problem with non-residents using the bus.

“It does get a little crowded,” junior economics major Justin Day said.

Junior psychology major Calei Chan lives in a house on Rhode Island Avenue and now has to walk from the far side of campus to her house, nearly a two-mile walk.

“People don’t realize it’s a really long walk,” Chan said. “[The new rule is] annoying.”

Bus drivers will be lenient for the first couple days, Allen said. The ID check will only occur between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. for the safety of students who want to use the bus at night.

“I have no problem with [the new rule]. If I lived over there, I’d be pissed off,” Day said, pointing across the street while sitting at the View’s bus stop.

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