A tuition freeze may have made the country's economic crisis easier on students, but rising fuel prices may jeopardize Texas Tech's partnership withCitibus.
The Student Government Association is examining the budget situation between Tech and Citibus, as well as budget-cut options.
Tech currently pays approximately $2.2 million yearly to Citibus, a price that mostly is determined by fuel costs. Because of rising fuel prices, Tech has already incurred an extra $91,216 in costs this year.
In order to combat the rising fuel prices, SGA External Vice President Austin Pennington proposed four possible alternatives to save money at a transportation advisory committee meeting held in June. These changes are in addition to the bus cutbacks that have been in place on campus since the spring semester.
"The reasons behind the changes are that the fees have not increased, students pay the same amount of money that they did before," Pennington said. "But the gas prices are doubling, and we just don't have the money to pay for it."
During the meeting, officials decided to reduce the number of buses on the Northwest and Overton routes in order to bring the budget back to its original numbers.
The Northwest route includes Lynnwood Townhomes and The Gateway apartment complexes. This route now will have only two buses, Pennington said, and students can expect a wait time of 24 minutes between buses.
The Overton route picks up students from University Pointe and University Trails apartment complexes. The route now will be reduced to one bus with a wait time of 22 minutes between pickups. On days where the weather is bad, Pennington said, a second bus will be added to the route in order to help more students - students who would normally walk or ride their bikes - get to campus. SGA officials expect this to reduce the wait time to 11 minutes.
Pennington said the other major change is that University Fountains apartment complex no longer will be on a campus bus route because it opted out of its Citibus contract.
Pennington said the SGA plans to send out a letter through e-mail or the U.S. Postal Service to notify all students of the bus changes.
"I just want to get the word out there about the changes so students know what's going on and what to expect," he said. "I want students to be able to plan ahead when they get here in the fall."
The director of Citibus' Tech routes, Hoyt Day, helped to formulate the solution to solve Tech's transportation budget problem and said there was really no other option.
"The fuel price is just so high," he said. "That is why they had to do the cuts."
Day said he believes cutting back the Northwest and Overton routes was the best decision to help the budget and affect the least amount of students. The cutback decisions were based largely on the comparatively small number of students riding those particular bus routes.
"In my opinion, I hate to have any route that doesn't have enough buses on it," he said. "It's just not a good route if there aren't enough buses."
Managing Director of Parking Services, Eric Crouch, attended the transportation meeting and agreed with the decision to cut the routes back.
"I think that probably had the least impact on students," he said. "Really, most of the buses students use are on campus."
Crouch said off-campus busing originally started because there was no parking on campus. Off-campus routes were more necessary 10 years ago because of the lack of parking.
"Now we have plenty of parking on campus," he said, "and that is why I think cutting off-campus routes was the best decision."
Citibus has provided Tech with bus services since 1968 and started off-campus routes in 1997.
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