Starting tonight at 6 p.m., students won’t need a car to get from campus to downtown Tuscaloosa.
Downtown Express is a new bus service that will transport students to and from campus and various downtown locations. Peyton Falkenburg, SGA director of programming and advancements, said the goal of Downtown Express is to give on-campus residents the ability to travel downtown in the safest and most efficient way possible.
The program will especially benefit UA’s international students, as well as freshmen and any other on-campus student who doesn’t have a car, said Matt Calderone, SGA deputy executive vice president.
Another concern on college campuses deals with students and alcohol, Falkenburg said.
“If you go downtown to eat and have a couple of drinks, there is no reason for you to drive under the influence,” he said. “We have to find ways to reduce the amount of risks that students get themselves in to.”
Originally, there was going to be one route on campus, but the SGA soon realized an additional need.
“We decided to do one route that covered the north side of campus, but then we thought about the students on the south side of campus, living in places such as Burke, Tutwiler and the sorority houses, and we decided on two routes in order to cover them also,” said Falkenburg.
Ralph Clayton, assistant director of Transportation Services, said he and his colleagues try to make the transit system as efficient as possible.
“We strive to be efficient, but, of course, there are variables that we can’t control such as traffic and things like that, but we value the students’ opinions, and we welcome ways to make our transit system better,” he said.
This service, which is being equally funded by the SGA, UA’s department of Financial Affairs and Transportation Services, will run for a month serving as the initiative’s pilot program.
The University has been very supportive and willing to help this program, Clayton said.
Falkenburg said that if the ridership numbers show sustainable usage, Linda Gilbert, vice president of financial affairs, has agreed that Financial Affairs would fund the bus service in it’s entirety for the fall and spring semesters.
“My hope is that we show great ridership, so that, maybe in the fall, we can have some more stops and some more buses so that we can keep our efficiency up,” he said.
Although Downtown Express will soon be up and running, during the beginning stages of the program some were skeptical about how successful it would be in light of a past failure.
“This idea has been tried before, and it wasn’t successful,” Falkenburg said.
A past SGA administration tried to get a similar service started a few years ago called the E-Bus [Entertainment Bus], but the routes didn’t stick to on-campus locations, and students had to pay with Bama Cash in order to use its services, Falkenburg said.
“We really just had to show them why Downtown Express would be a success and how this time would be different from last time,” he said.
Because of the success of the Downtown Urban Renewal Project, downtown Tuscaloosa has been revitalized, Calderone said.
“I believe that the changes in the downtown area will help make the difference between the success of the E-Bus and the Downtown Express,” he said.
Many local businesses are on board and are willing to help make Downtown Express a success, and the SGA Judicial Board will be playing games and giving out prizes tonight, such as gift certificates and free meals at downtown businesses, to the students who utilize Downtown Express, Falkenburg said.
There is also a UA App available for students to download, called Transloc, that will track the buses so that students will have an idea of how close or far away the bus is.
