Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts, is a visiting
professor of policy studies at UCLA. Shoup is chair of the
Department of Urban Planning at UCLA.
By Michael Dukakis and Donald
Shoup
Imagine a new public transportation program that reduces traffic
congestion, saves energy, cleans the air and costs very little.
UCLA now offers a program called BruinGo! in partnership with Santa
Monica’s Big Blue Bus. Students, staff and faculty simply
swipe their UCLA identification cards as they board the bus and
ride for free. In exchange, UCLA pays Santa Monica 45 cents per
ride taken.
BruinGo! is not free transit, but instead an innovative and
cost-effective way to pay for transit. UCLA makes BruinGo!
available to 68,000 students, staff and faculty. The program has
caused a surge in transit ridership to campus. BruinGo! began in
Fall 2000, and by Spring 2001 the student transit ridership to
campus increased by 51 percent while staff/faculty ridership
increased by 73 percent. These dramatic increases are all the more
impressive because they occurred after several years of declining
mass transit ridership to UCLA.
UCLA’s cost to provide BruinGo! last year turned out to be
only $810,000, which is $1.50 per month per eligible person on
campus. Because UCLA pays the bus fare on behalf of BruinGo!
riders, most of the program’s cost became direct financial
aid for students, staff and faculty who depend on the bus for their
transportation to campus.
BruinGo! not only provides free transportation for trips to
campus, but also for other trips around Los Angeles. Students ride
free to the Getty Center, their internships, volunteer work, the
beach, or anywhere else they want to go. Whole classes take the bus
for field trips to museums, government offices, or other events.
Faculty and staff ride the bus to Westwood Village for lunch and to
off-campus worksites, saving time both for themselves and the
university.
UCLA’s partnership with the Big Blue Bus to offer BruinGo!
is an excellent example of Chancellor Carnesale’s initiative,
UCLA in LA: Partnerships for a Greater Los Angeles. As the
chancellor said when he announced the initiative, UCLA takes
enormous pride in being a civic partner with Los Angeles, as the
surrounding city enriches the UCLA community. Los Angeles is a
limitless source of opportunities and ideas. It is an extended
classroom of unparalleled value. Whatever students study on campus,
there are probably real-world examples of the topic nearby.
BruinGo! gives students a valuable new form of access to this
extended classroom.
BruinGo! helps not only UCLA, but all of Los Angeles. Students,
staff and faculty who shifted from cars to the bus during campus
commutes made 615,000 fewer vehicle trips last year, helping to
reduce traffic congestion. This reduction in vehicle travel reduced
27 tons of pollution emissions that would have entered the
city’s air without BruinGo!
Five other UC campuses (Berkeley, Davis, San Diego, Santa
Barbara and Santa Cruz) have transit-pass programs that allow
students to ride public transportation for free. Many other
universities across the nation have similar programs. But although
Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion and air pollution in
the U.S., UCLA is the only university in Los Angeles that offers
fare-free public transportation for its students. At UCLA it is
offered only on the Big Blue Bus.
Suppose, however, that every college and university in Los
Angeles County offered its students and staff free, convenient
access to all of the county’s transit systems. That would
extend the fare-free concept to about 240,000 students on these
campuses in addition to all the staff and faculty, and would
provide significant reductions in traffic congestion and air
pollution. This is not just a pie in the sky notion; the
MTA’s new management team is working on the necessary
hardware right now. A smartcard transit pass will soon enable
riders to pay for travel on every bus and rail transit line in Los
Angeles.
If UCLA’s successful experiment with BruinGo! is repeated
at other colleges and universities in the region, thousands of
students, staff and faculty will begin to ride public transit and
leave their cars at home. This will reduce traffic congestion,
energy consumption and air pollution in Southern California at a
very low cost to the universities and at no new cost to the
taxpayers. In these ways, BruinGo! is a promising innovation with
enormous potential to improve transportation and the environment in
Southern California.