Today’s Staff Editorial

It’s 2 a.m., early on a Sunday morning. Your friend left you to hook up with someone from the party, and you’re left alone outside of The Towers at University Town Center, trying to figure out how to get home. You vaguely remember something about a bus service you can call, and phone 301-314-NITE (which you luckily had saved in your phone from freshman orientation). The dispatcher, however, simply tells you you’re out of the service’s range, and if you can just walk a few blocks — more than a mile — to Graduate Gardens, you can get picked up.

Many students at this university have had just this kind of experience with the Department of Transportation Services’ NITE Ride, in which they either had to wait three hours for a bus or had to walk home and pray they weren’t mugged, according to yesterday’s Diamondback article. Students can supposedly call the service from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. to get picked up from areas not covered by other DOTS operating routes. Story after story, year after year, many students have unique (but generally negative) perspectives on the university-provided, late-night bus service.

Now, we’re not saying students have never had a good experience with NITE Ride. But in a city like College Park — riddled with crime this university is committed to stopping — this editorial board feels the service meant to help students out of tricky situations should be more reliable and flexible. NITE Ride costs DOTS $366,000 each year; students should have more positive stories to tell about it — or better yet, no stories at all. It should just be accepted that students can rely on NITE Ride.

Service during weekdays is apparently exemplary. Why can’t that translate to the weekends, when university officials know many more students will be out, in potentially dangerous areas? If DOTS really wants a service students can feel safe relying on, officials need to make sure they set it up to fit students’ needs.

This is just one of a series of problems students have faced with DOTS this year. It overbooked Lot 19 and Lot 5 in Regents Drive Garage, with accompanying construction confusing many drivers into tickets. The department cut three routes: the Bowie, Burtonsville and Laurel Park and Rides, to provide the popular Shady Grove bus with more money. So far, DOTS has not been popular.

But this really isn’t new — the department has been a source of contempt for many students over the years. Being what it is, DOTS doesn’t really stand a chance with students; it gives out far too many tickets.

But this doesn’t mean officials should just give up. Yes, students frequently complain about how much money they hand over in tickets or the red tape they have to cut through to talk to a department official, but these are things that can’t necessarily be fixed. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try to remedy the things that can be. This editorial board has come up with just a few specific ways DOTS can improve.

Solution one: Don’t overbook parking lots. It’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth. Count the number of spaces you have available, then only allow that many people to register. There are enough lots on this campus; if someone has to walk a bit farther to have a registered spot in a different lot, it’s better than being slapped with a $75 parking ticket for not finding a spot in your registered lot.

Solution two: Give everyone fair notice before drastically changing bus routes. Students and faculty alike rely on buses to get to the campus daily. It is simply unfair to let them know well into the semester their means of transportation are disappearing with only days or weeks notice.

Solution three: Figure out how to get students safely back to the campus late at night. Realize these are students asking for help, and try to accommodate rather than berate.

Implementing any of these strategies — even just one — could drastically change the role of DOTS on this campus for the better.