OPINION: Why The Shuttle Will Fail And What To Do About It

  Sign to event parking at The University of Texas at Tyler. (Source: James Hescock)

This week, UT-Tyler Emergency Management and Safety Department launched a shuttle program for student parking. The shuttle will transport participating students to and from a new remote parking location at the abandoned behavioral health building on University Blvd. The shuttle offers routes to current parking permit holders and runs every 20 minutes, starting from remote parking, then traveling to on-campus stops that include Soules College, RBN and others. 

While this may seem like a helpful option, the shuttle program will eventually fail and students will still be stuck in their current situation: scarce parking with no relief

I say this because the previous shuttle program the university ran in 2017 also failed and this program is no different. Like the new program, this previous shuttle ran throughout campus and stopped at designated locations every 10 minutes. The university eventually cancelled the program because students stopped using it.

However, the complaints have not changed. Back then, students complained of the shuttle being unreliable and of not knowing when or where the shuttle was on its route or of whether it was worth their time to wait for the shuttle. Instead, many students elected to go ahead and walk. There were also times when the shuttle broke down and was unavailable. Yet, students did not know this occurred and waited to no avail.

The shuttle program's lack of dependability inhibited it from being a service students could rely on. So rather, students eventually took the more reliable option and just walked. 

The same goes for this new shuttle program. As College of Education and Psychology Senator Kayla Holman told shuttle director Robert Cromley Tuesday in the student government meeting, the new shuttle is an inefficient option to walking or even just skipping class. 

She said that after the time it takes to drive through campus to look for a parking spot, then to drive to the behavioral health center and then wait on a shuttle, to many students would not use the shuttle.

"If it was a student running late...they would have no time to take the shuttle,"she said. "I just think they would skip class. That's an issue I've been seeing with students, just skipping their first class of the day."

Until students can depend on the shuttle, they are unlikely to use it, which means the shuttle program will eventually fail.

Cromley told student government, "Obviously, if we don't get very many riders, we are going to discontinue this service."

While offering to serve students is commendable, there needs to be a paradigm shift in administrators. They must think less like administrators organizing shared resources for all and more like small business owners meeting customer wants and needs. They must focus on tailoring parking solutions around students' lifestyles, not merely whether the university can run a shuttle.  

Mr. Cromley saved students a lot of money by switching parking permit distribution from mail to pick-up only, so he is to be commended. However, I still think there is a paradigm shift that needs to happen on administration's behalf for the shuttle to be successful.

Shuttle Faculty & Staff Instead

Rather than focus on a shuttle for students, the university should instead relaunch the volunteer faculty and staff shuttle program it had in 2017. This program used nearby Rose Heights Church's parking lot to facilitate an on-call shuttle for faculty and staff who volunteered to surrender their parking to make more spots available for students. 

Of the program, UT-Tyler Police Chief Mike Meddars said in 2017, “We [haven’t] been getting the calls this year from students and their parents [saying], ‘Hey, I don’t have a place to park out there.’ Hopefully those calls aren’t going somewhere else, but we’re not getting them this year.”

“We had 90 people park today remotely and shuttle in,” he said. "Without those people doing that, we would have definitely been short on spaces this morning. So, it’s really working out well.”

Rather than ask the larger population (the students) to adjust their lifestyles to fit a campus shuttle, the university should instead ask the smaller population (faculty and staff) to volunteer for the reinstated special shuttle program. This time it can use the behavioral health center for remote parking. It seems these faculty and staff will be both more likely to use it and will more easily accommodate the shuttle and its special schedule than the large student body.

Plus, it is more natural for students to find parking on-campus than to look for it off-campus in a remote parking lot. 

Prof. Rebecca McElyea poses for a picture before she boards the remote shuttle in 2017. (Source: James Hescock)

So, UT-Tyler should reinstitute its faculty and staff volunteer shuttle for greater success at providing parking relief. 

However, given that Mr. Cromley's response to Sen. Holeman's concerns was that he felt students then had a responsibility to "get up earlier" to make the shuttle, it becomes clear that this situation will require student government to advocate for this reinstated shuttle option---or whatever solution it wants--to prevail against a director's competing viewpoint. The temptation might be to to leave things alone and let students keep struggling with an ineffective shuttle so not to cause conflict, but SGA needs to respectfully assert itself and say what students want. So it should. 

Parking has been a longtime problem at UT-Tyler, and according to SGA President Chloe Dix, is also a problem at many other Texas campuses. Yet, this does not mean UT-Tyler students are without options. The university should restore its faculty and staff shuttle service and provide greater relief to students looking for parking on-campus. While this may not solve all of students' parking problems, it will be a useful and productive step towards alleviating student parking trouble. 

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