EDITORIAL: UHCL needs to address lack of public transportation for students

Imagine what life would be like without the accessibility to get where you need to go everyday. A life where you rigorously plan every hour, minute and second of your day according to a transportation service that may-or-may-not be available to you when you need it.

At University of Houston-Clear Lake about 11 percent of our student body is without transportation, including 99 percent of our international students. There is a clear lack of public transportation to help transport them not only to-and-from our campus, but also to complete daily tasks for basic necessities and everyday needs.

UHCL is situated on the outskirts of Houston, where it can be troubling to obtain transit from the Houston Metro bus services. The UHCL campus is not comfortably located by any of the area bus stations for Metro, and there is no compatible schedule for UHCL’s night classes that end at 9:50 p.m. The closest bus stop to UHCL is the Bay Area-Gemini Park & Ride, which stops running at 7:34 p.m.

UHCL became a four-year university in 2014 when our school added freshmen and sophomore curriculums. Before this was implemented, UHCL should have incorporated a viable transportation service for its students. With talk of UHCL dorms still at the whisper stage, occupancy at the University Forest Apartments consists of 12 percent UHCL freshmen and 80 percent UHCL international students. As we transition from a commuter campus to one that will eventually consist of student dormitories, the lack of public transportation will detour incoming high school and international students from considering this great university as their school of choice and/or make life more difficult for them than it needs to be.

UHCL’s current investment in one shuttle that seats 12 people creates a very limited service and unreliable transit. There are too few seats and frequently the shuttle is not running because there is no one to drive it. A big reason for absent drivers is because UHCL’s salary for drivers is not competitive with other transportation services.

On the weekend, it is essential for students who lack transportation to get groceries for the upcoming week. Some students walk to campus on the scheduled Saturday pick-up time to be shuttled to the nearest grocery store, but there has been several times that a driver was not available that day and instead they had to walk an hour, or 2.8 miles, down Bay Area Boulevard to El Camino Real. The walk to the grocery store is long; imagine having to walk that hour back with an armload of groceries.

One of the ways that UHCL has tried to compensate for the lack of public transportation is the implementation of a RideShare program. RideShare is an electronic bulletin board used for students who would be interested in carpooling. The problem with RideShare is the need for a ride outweighs the number of people willing to carpool. This is not an effective alternative to one shuttle.

When looking at the surrounding four-year universities in and out of our area like University of Houston-Main, Steven F. Austin, Sam Houston, etc., they all provide a reliable transportation system that benefits the students. Some of the shuttle systems have GPS tracking devises and an app for their students’ smartphones, which pinpoints the exact location of the bus and provides an estimated time of arrival.

We are accumulating a greater population of students with talks of acquiring freshman dormitories in the not so distant future. Establishing a UHCL park-and-ride system at an alternate location, like Metro does with their customers, should be a priority. UHCL needs to invest in more shuttles, which seat larger quantities of students. UHCL needs to staff drivers with concrete schedules by increasing hourly pay in effort to keep skilled drivers on our campus. If not, UHCL needs to invest in a third-party transportation service where it would not be paying for additional buses, bus drivers and shuttle maintenance/repairs.

With 8,600 undergraduate students embodying UHCL, it is time for our school leaders to step up and allocate the appropriate funds to provide a reliable transit system for the students without transportation who love and enjoy this great and diverse university.