Officials from Mississippi State University as well as the city of Starkville are working on a bus route that will connect campus to the city.
A public hearing was held Thursday during which Bill Broyles, assistant vice president of Student Affairs, and Mike Harris, director of Parking and Transportation, informed the public of the proposed plan and then opened the floor to any questions or concerns.
The title of the speech given at the hearing was “Connecting City and Campus: A Green Solution to Traffic and Congestion.”
Broyles said the green factor was a major part of the plan.
“We want to stress sustainability in this project because we’ve got an environment we’ve got to take care of,” he said.
The proposed plan includes three different bus routes which will give Starkville citizens and MSU students access to many important locations around town. The buses will run from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m. every Monday through Saturday. Broyles said the purpose of this system would be to provide an easy and convenient way for people to shop, bank and access the post office, health care, public housing and high-density residential areas.
Jeremiah Dumas, chair of the joint committee between the city and the campus on this project, opened by stating the plan is now only in its beginning stages.
“This is part of the process in applying for the grant that we hope to apply for,” he said.
Harris said the first-year bus rides will be free to anyone interested in riding to give officials a chance to observe trends in ridership. After that year, a fee will be required to ride. The bus system in Oxford, as well in other university towns, is being considered to set the price range. There would, however, be a monthly pass available for anyone who would ride frequently.
He said a bus system like this has been attempted before, but the major problem with the original was people had no way to know when or where to board the bus. The previous program worked like a taxi system where riders chose destinations. The new plans have multiple fixed shuttle stops with weather shelters, like on campus, which will also have LED screens to report when the next bus would arrive. Riders also will be able to checktransit.msstate.edufrom a smart phone or computer to see when the next bus will be at their desired stop.
 
For those without access to a smart phone or computer, the committee is working on a different 1-800 number at each bus stop that will give the next bus’s arrival time to that spot.
The funding of the project will determine when it will begin. The committee will present the grant in March 2012. If funding is received, the grant would start Oct. 1, 2012. Broyles said the bus system obviously could not start until buses have been purchased.
“The dilemma that we’ve got is that we cannot buy buses until we know we’ve got the grant money,” Broyles said.
Because of this, the earliest the system would start is January 2013. One of the proposed routes, however, will start in August 2012, even if the committee does not receive funding for the whole project. If that is the case, the route will be funded out of the current system.
This route will connect campus to Lynn Lane and the sportsplex. The route, known as the remote Park-N-Ride route, will offer students the option to buy a campus parking decal for only $8. This permit will not allow students to park on campus from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., but they are free to park on campus after that time period and during the weekends.
A similar route will connect campus to the Scales lot and the Rec-plex area east of the Wise Center. A half-priced parking permit will grant students access to this option. Buses on this route will run from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
The committee said it hopes this will encourage people to park their cars off campus and take the buses onto campus in order to eliminate the parking and traffic problems.
“I dream of a time when we get a lot of those cars off the street because people are using the mass transit,” Broyles said.
Special arrangements for the handicapped have been considered, including separate vans that will assist the handicapped more efficiently.
The proposed bus system will be in addition to every bus route currently on campus, so each of the existing routes — Downtown Dawg, the gameday shuttle and the normal weekday routes — will remain.
Harris said the bus system would, however, be altered on gamedays.
“Everything changes during home football games,” Harris said.
The system will run throughout the school year but will stop when MSU is closed.