11.21.2007

Us vs. Them!

Is Wesleyan's transportation system competitive with peer institutions?

A little web digging and a lot of assistance from the pioneering Estrella Lopez '07 and Zach Blau '09 reveals that Williams offers shuttle service to New York ($26 one-way), Boston ($16), and Albany before breaks, while Amherst has a fleet of hybrid University-owned cars available for student rental, an account with ZipCar, and 3-4 Peter Pan buses to major cities every day (3 to NY, 4 to Boston, and additional weekend times). Bard provides students with free Saturday shuttle service to nearby malls, plus access to $1 tickets on the Duchess County bus to the Poughkeepsie Metro-North (located 40 minutes away from campus - sounds kind of like New Haven). Tufts students get free Friday-Saturday shuttle service into Boston from 9pm-3am, plus access to ZipCar for a reduced rate. Trinity has an entirely student-run shuttle service that runs through Hartford in the evening, all week. But the winner is Bates, with $10 bus service to Boston once a month (that's a 2.5 hour trip!!), FREE weekend shuttle service to nearby malls, a deal with ZipCar, a fleet of rentable on-campus vehicles, and a BIKE CO-OP. What? Amazing! It can't help you get to New Haven, but it would prepare you for an extended adolescence in Brooklyn AND make you fit and healthy and keep the air clean! (photo, Bates' Bike Co-op fleet)

For...fun? Here is a link to the American Public Transportation Association's report titled "Public Transportation's Contribution to Greenhouse Gas Reduction". EON enthusiasts may be interested - and may want to recruit an EnviroScience major to decipher some of the graphs.

Because that's what I do for fun.
Eat up that Thanksgiving bird...

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