To: Vincent Boudreau

From: David Minchala

Subject: Issues concerning the CCNY Shuttle Busses during harsh weathers.

Date: 13 February 2019

Purpose

The purpose of this memo is to bring up the matter of the provided student transportation from the nearest MTA station to the CCNY Campus and vice versa to go home during harsh weathers. A transportation that many enrolled students depend on when needed.

Summary

Students enrolled in City College are enforced to walk from the nearest MTA station to the CCNY Campus and vice versa to go home when extremely cold, raining, snowing or extremely hot. The walk can be exhausting for students and many depend on the provided shuttle busses ; through experiences one can say it’s a non reliable form of transportation for students. Busses arrive after long periods of time and normally get overcrowded by students. Not only is it unpleasant to be in crowded bus but tremendously dangerous if the driver can’t see the side mirrors.

Discussion

My view in the CCNY shuttle bus sparked on January 30, the weather was below 0 degrees. I remember exiting the NAC building around 8 p.m. after an exhausting long day at city college. As soon as I exited the building I was hit by the bone-chilling weather. There was no way I was going to walk to 145th to take the train. So I crossed the street and entered the building across the NAC where people wait for the shuttle bus. After waiting approximately 30 minutes a bus finally arrived but as soon as it made its stop students swamped the bus and many students including me were left waiting once again for the next bus. I was already tired so I eventually put on my hoodie utilized the drawstrings and tied it until the point where one can see only my eyes and took on the challenge to hike the chilling weather to the train station and I wasn’t the only one. So what’s the takeaway of this story you may ask? The college should be providing students with a more frequent bus transportation to the nearest MTA stations, especially during harsh weathers.

Recommendation

As a current enrolled CCNY student. I strongly believe that students should be provided a more reliable form of transportation from the MTA station to the campus and vice versa when experiencing harsh weathers. A possible solution can be a more frequent bus schedule and another pickup point where students can walk half way and if the bus is in route to the school or train station students can still be picked up halfway. In the case where the school can’t afford to have more busses or drivers, the school can host an event in which can charge an entrance fee and with that money use it as a sort of fundraiser to afford to pay busses and/or drivers when needed. Another possible solution is for the CUNY system to form a deal with Uber or Lyft for student discount prices to the school campus or to the train station. The negative side to this is that not everyone has the ability to afford  a cab meaning that only a selective few will benefit from this.