Earlier this month, the St. Louis Metro public transportation system released their new draft plan which proposes significant schedule changes to their busses.
BY: Will Murry
Art & Life Editor
Earlier this month, the St. Louis Metro public transportation system released their new draft plan which proposes significant schedule changes to their busses. The plan will be increasing the frequency for routes closer to the city
while decreasing the frequency of the routes in St. Louis counties. While beneficial for riders in the city, this new plan may make daily commutes for students, and even staff of STLCC, much more difficult.
“These changes are completely unnecessary. There’s no reason to change the times,” said Meramec sophomore Courtney Billops. “If I get off of work at a certain time and I have to wait an hour instead of 30 minutes, that’s highly inconvenient for me.”
The changes were garnered by customer research done through the “Metro Reimagined” study, a comprehensive analysis of the Metro system launched in July 2017. The changes, according to Metro, are “designed around people, and all of its operations, schedules, routes and services were developed to meet our riders’ needs.” However, students and staff who take affected bus route 21 – Watson Road – aren’t too satisfied with the new changes.
“I use the 21 bus five days a week, because my family can only afford one small car,” said professor Robert Hahn. “I appreciate the fact that our students get free bus passes but as of right now, I teach daytime, afternoon, and night time classes and my students can get on a bus, get on every half an hour and be on time to class. It would be best not to encumber our students and faculty with increased wait times.”
The proposed changes for the 21 bus would schedule weekday busses on a 30 minute frequency from 5 a. m. until 7 p. m., changing to every 60 minutes until midnight. Weekend busses would depart every 60 minutes for the entire day. While this may not phase most daytime student bus commuters, this presents an unwelcome change for students with night and Saturday classes.
“The problem is, in order to increase that ridership downtown, it seems that they’re going to diminish other routes. I think that the colleges and universities are always a vital part of a modestly sized city and every modestly sized city I’ve visited always have had a regular and robust line for the colleges,” said Hahn
Though all hearing dates for the new proposed plan have passed, Metro is keeping their online survey open until May 4, 2018 to collect feedback for the proposed changes. The new transit plan will be revised this spring and will be shared in the summer of 2018. Metro has promised that no major changes to the MetroBus system will occur until early 2019. For more questions, and to view their new draft plan, visit www.metrostlouis.org/reimagined to view what routes are affected and take their online survey.
