Miscommunication from UHCL administrators leads to concerns regarding shuttle service for students
A miscommunication led to the suspension of the University of Houston-Clear Lake’s (UHCL) shuttle service to five apartment complexes located on Bay Area Boulevard.
University Parking and Transportation sent an email to UHCL students June 4 stating, “We are sorry for the inconvenience, but we no longer service The Park [at Clear Lake] and The Cove apartments starting June 10th, 2019.”
A follow-up email sent June 5 states, “Starting July 15th, 2019, we will also no longer service The Ivy and Lakeshore/Wolf Creek Apartments. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”
Mark Denney, vice president of administration and finance, said a miscommunication error resulted in the suspension, but it is being corrected.
“Despite the reasons for the changes to the shuttle service, it was not the intent to fully end the shuttle service that supported our students who live off-campus at nearby apartment complexes,” Denney said. “As such, once the miscommunication was identified, the shuttle service has been modified and will be posted to the Transportation website as soon as possible with the revised routes that restores service on Bay Area Blvd.”
Reasons for the changes
Harry Glass, manager of university parking and transportation, initially said the suspension of shuttle service to the apartments was based on a student survey emailed to all students March 18, documentation of student ridership, budget, and the limited number of shuttle drivers and vehicles.
“At present, these changes are intended to be temporary, but future changes, either returning to the previous route or new routes, are not yet identified,” Glass said.
Denney said the miscommunication error is what ended the service fully, as the intent was only to reduce the number of shuttle routes up and down Bay Area Boulevard.
“A revised shuttle route is being developed that will return service to the areas where those apartment complexes are located, however, again, for the conservation of funding, routes will be fewer, and will be to centralized locations, versus door-to-door,” Denney said.
As one of the changes to take place within the Division of Student Affairs, the shuttle service was moved under University Parking and Transportation earlier this year. Denney said it was operated under Student Affairs and funded by student support fees.
“The Parking Dept., now Parking and Transportation, has two primary sources of funding: parking fees and tickets, and the very limited student support fees transferred with the assumption of the shuttle service,” Denney said. “The Parking fees are already dedicated to the maintenance and upkeep of our parking lots and there is little capacity to reallocate those funds to support the shuttle. The shuttle itself had been poorly maintained prior to its transfer to Parking and Transportation, primarily as shuttle maintenance was not the expertise of the departments overseeing the service prior to the transfer, which was a primary reason for moving the shuttle service in the first place. Regardless, considerable resources have been dedicated to both necessary maintenance of the shuttle and to maintaining more reliable service through the hiring of more student shuttle operators. Both have consumed much of the minimal budget the service operates on.”
Concerns regarding student safety
The miscommunication error has sparked concerns amongst international students regarding student safety, health, and transportation to and from campus.
“The vast majority of international students live in the apartment communities that the shuttle bus no longer plans to visit after July 15, putting the majority of them at a disadvantage when trying to get rides to UHCL,” said Izuh Ikpeama, former 2018-2019 Student Government Association president. “Without this ride, they’ll be forced to walk over 25 minutes in the hot, Texas heat.”
Raghavi Vijayakumar, management information systems graduate student and one of the students who would be impacted by a suspension of the shuttle service reached out to University Parking and Transportation with apprehension.
“I heard about the suspension of shuttle service when I received a [email] from the UHCL parking department,” Vijayakumar said. “I immediately [emailed] them regarding our concerns and got no response from them.”
Madhumitha Baskar, management information systems major, said international students living in the affected apartments will have to walk nearly an hour to reach campus.
“There will be heat wave alerts and warning messages in July and August,” Baskar said. “We would be totally exhausted and sick by the time we reach college. We have classes that end at 10 p.m. in the [evening] and walking back at that time is highly unsafe and risky.”
In terms of walking distance, The Park at Clear Lake apartments is the farthest away at 2.1 miles. The Cove Apartments, Lakeshore Apartments, and the Wolf Creek apartments are 1.3 miles away, and The Ivy at Clear Creek Apartment Homes is 0.9 miles from campus.
Samraddhi Upadhyay, engineering management graduate student, said by suspending the service, the health and safety of students is at risk.
“Houston weather is always unpredictable, which is why it hard to decide either to go out or not,” Upadhyay said. “Which is one of the reasons international students want the shuttle to provide service as the summer and rain here is unbearable and in this kind of weather makes it even harder to walk to the campus.”
Gigi Do, assistant vice president of global learning and strategy and senior international officer, said student safety is a top priority and alternative options for students to get to campus will become available in July.
“Something I have learned in my very short time here, UHCL welcomes and values the many international students who attend the university, and realizes that many of them reside in apartments away from campus,” Do said. “Students living at The Ivy and Wolf Creek Apartments will continue to have service until July when we plan to have alternative opportunities available to them.”
Lack of viable shuttle alternatives
Baskar said limitations regarding transportation will only make life harder on international students who rely heavily on the service.
“As international students with job restrictions, we can’t afford a private vehicle and Houston has no public transportation, which makes our UHCL shuttle the only mode of transportation,” Baskar said. “We would be affected to go for grocery trips as well without the UHCL service. The new international students who are about to join would also take a step back if transportation is going to be a major issue because without the shuttle service life is hard on a daily basis.”
Aside from transportation to the campus, international students use the shuttle service for weekly trips to buy groceries.
“We had grocery trips as well, which would take us for groceries every week and this was so useful because finding a ride to the groceries would take us a minimum of $20, which is difficult for us as students to afford,” said Greeshma Srinivasa Raju, management information systems graduate student.
Current transportation alternatives for students, beyond walking, has been the usage of rideshare services such as Lyft and Uber. Shobana Jayapalan, biotechnology graduate student, said this option is not viable for international students.
“We already have experiences of seeing snakes on the pavement while walking back home late at night,” Jayapalan said. “It’s either you better pay $7 to $10 every time you don’t have the shuttle or you end up walking in the unsafe space.”
Additionally, Jayapalan said the alternatives for housing closer to campus are not feasible for international students who also work on campus.
“Without the shuttle services it’s really going to be troublesome for every one of us who completely rely on [the] shuttle for coming to school,” Jayapalan said. “This gives us an [impression] that everyone who studies at UHCL should own a car by themselves [or] else you should move to Hunter Hall or UFA, both of which are hard [to afford] for international students who manage their expenses just by working on campus.”
The need for shuttle service going forward
International students like Baskar say they love UHCL but request the continuation of the shuttle service.
“We love UHCL and what it offers us,” Baskar said. “It would be relieving if the shuttle service is back for the upcoming semesters and make our learning experience here better.”
Vijayakumar echoes Baskar’s sentiments regarding the necessity of the shuttle service.
“We are grateful for [UHCL for] providing us [the] UHCL shuttle service so far, and we would sincerely request them to continue to do so as many of us are international students and don’t have a transport of our own,” Vijayakumar said.
UHCL President Ira K. Blake addressed students’ concerns about the shuttle service and what a suspension would mean to students’ health, safety and transportation to and from campus.
“At UH-Clear Lake, we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards of safety and stewardship,” Blake said. “As we aim to demonstrate a consistent ethic of care for every member of our campus community, we must make prudent use of our resources in order to maximize their benefit.
Blake said Denney has been in contact with students who utilize the shuttle and will be meeting with them to receive their input.
