Week Six

            Imagine the coldest day in winter. The wind howling across your face, whipping around your hair, and biting through every layer you’ve methodically applied to your person. The snow isn’t falling, but twisting up into the sky in a sort of violent dance. You’re standing on the side of a street, with no one for company but the wind, snow, and cold concrete sidewalk. In the distance, you hear the sound of relief that you’ve been waiting for: The roar of a CATA bus accelerating from a stop, and the familiar red and white monster lumbers into view. As the brakes screech in protest, the vehicle slows to a standstill a few feet past you. As you hurriedly climb inside and feed the machine $1.50, you instantly forget the last fifteen minutes you’ve spent cursing the cold and the bus. The bus lurches into motion, temporarily throwing you off balance and into a wall of bodies. After you steady yourself against an overhead bar, you look around and notice how packed the bus is. The shear multitude of bodies pushed closer together than socially acceptable is astounding. “How is the vehicle even moving?” you wonder. As you begin to settle into the pattern of speeding up and slowing down for stops, you let your mind wander in an effort to distract from the scene surround you. Busses aren’t exactly the prettiest things in the world. Built almost entirely for function, they offer little in the way of beauty. Think of a big metal box, screw on some wheels and an engine, and throw a few of the cheapest, smallest plastic chairs inside, and you have a CATA bus. In an effort to keep the exterior of the bus clean and simple, all advertisements are placed inside the bus, above the windows. However, this has the end effect of making the windows smaller, which encloses the occupants even further. The floor is dirtier than a piece of 100-year-old carpet. The smell is comparable to a wet dog in sore need of a bath. The air is heavy with the breath of unfamiliar bodies pressing in on all sides. Even if you are lucky enough to obtain a seat, if your ride is longer than ten minutes, you will be stiff by the time your destination is reached. This, unfortunately, has become the norm for commuters across the State College area.

Quotes:

“I don’t really use the busses, Dave [a friend] has a car that we all use to get around.” – Sam Heppelmann (freshmen, physics)

“I routinely pay for the V and couldn’t care less about giving a company a few dollars if it meant they could do things right and not wait for full busses to go past.” – Thaddeus McGilicutty (junior, criminal justice)

“I don’t think I’d use the links more if they were free… I’d really like to see more buses on the blue and white loops though, so the wait isn’t as long.” – Laura Wake-Ramos (freshmen, architecture)

Facts:

A new free CATA app for Android-based smart phones is available for download. This app shows real-time bus locations and schedules, just like the app for the iPhone.

“CATA to offer bus tracking app.” Centre Daily Times [Centre County, PA] 2 February 2011: Web.

The University of Michigan offers free bussing to students, staff, and faculty on university and city busses through a program called MRide.

University of Michigan: Parking & Transportation Services. University of Michigan. n.d. Web. 14 February 2011.

CATA offers university employees unlimited CATA access for $5 a month, and students can purchase a ‘OnePass’ for a variety of time periods for decreasing monthly costs, ranging from $39 to $55 a month.

CATA. Centre Area Transit Authority. n.d. Web. 14 February 2011.

CATA is studying “the feasibility of making its entire bus system fare-free for all riders.”

Smeltz, Adam. “CATA Study to Explore Fare-Free Rider Access.” statecollege.com. State College, 17 January 2011. Web. 14 February 2011.

Further research required:

I am interested in investigating several professors who use the $5 month ride fee, and see their opinion and view on the current study. It should be interesting to compare the reaction of students to that of professors.

I am interested in analyzing the multitude of statistics available on catabus.com on ridership with many different breakdowns and spins on the data. It will also be interesting to analyze what they don’t provide statistics on.