Last Wednesday a senior at Rochester patiently waited for the Gold line to pick him up on the corner of Genesee and Genesee in the 19th ward. Since the first day of classes the Gold Line has picked him up and brought him the 1.3 miles to ITS. However, on Wednesday the bus saw him on the corner and proceeded to drive by. The student, flustered and confused, was forced to walk to campus in cold temperatures and found himself late to a meeting. Throughout the day, the bus continued to drive by its normal stops, leaving students in the 19th ward stranded.
The Gold Lines route starts at ITS and travels straight to Riverview. On the way back to campus it stops at a corner near Boulder Coffee, the corner of Genesee and Genesee, and will drop students off at Hutchinson before completing its route back at ITS. However, due to reasons unknown, bus drivers have been instructed to make no stops between campus and Riverview during the day. Although the schedule does not show the Gold Line making that stop at Genesee, it has stopped without fail all year. Many students rely on the bus, and made plans to live off campus knowing a bus stop was close to their residence. There is the option for students with cars to purchase a parking pass, but commuter passes are designated for Park Lot. Park Lot is closer to GLC then it is to ITS. So, in order for a student who lives off campus to drive their car to school, they would need to drive to Park lot and find another means of transportation from Park Lot to campus. Overall, the commuter pass is asking the students to pay around 200 dollars to simply take another shuttle to campus.
If the bus continues to pass by students, they could always leave extra early and make the walk to campus, but there are two reasons however, why this option is troubling. For one, Rochester was recently voted the second snowiest city in the country. Anyone who lives here knows that the temperatures can reach sub-zero on any given day, and snow gets so high that you can barely make it to class. At one point last year we were instructed to bring shovels to school. Are commuters supposed to carry their shovels on the 1.3 mile walk? Walking to school is simply impractical between December and March for any student who lives further then Anderson and Wilder towers (which is why students in Phase should be awarded a bus route as well). The other major issue when it comes to commuters walking is safety. Just last week students were sent an alert that read “Rochester Police and University Security captured a suspect this afternoon, minutes after he reportedly robbed an undergraduate male as the student was crossing the pedestrian bridge in route to River Campus.” If students can’t even walk across the footbridge to Riverview in the middle of the day, how do they expect students to walk through the entire 19th ward?
The fact is simple, Rochester does not have enough housing and in reality they need students to live off campus. The commuters are doing Rochester a favor by not taking up limited housing and the last thing the University should be doing to repay them is taking away a safe form of transportation. It only takes the bus an extra 1-2 minutes to make the Genesee stop, and hopefully the University will realize that a few minutes are worth providing if that is what it takes to keep our fellow students safe.
A petition has been started to fight this change, if you would like participate go to
Gold Line Petition