Editor,
The Daily Lobo has been inundated with complaints about the parking shuttles. Students objected to long waits, cramped quarters and poor shuttle management. Several suggested dramatically improving the system. We have a different solution to the problem: Eliminate the shuttle. Please. We beg you.
We reached this conclusion after reading the Daily Lobo: Students are regularly waiting 15 to 30 minutes for the shuttle at peak hours; the shuttle costs UNM more than $1 million per year; and, finally, students hate the shuttle.
Read that first point again, then think about how far away South Lot and North Lot are from campus. Our maps indicate a little more than three-quarters of a mile. Considering an adult can comfortably walk three miles per hour, it would take students about the same time to walk to campus from those lots as it does to wait for the shuttle during peak hours.
Now think about the second point. UNM is obviously not rolling in money, as evidenced by the library's $375,000 budget cut in journal subscriptions. Instead of retaining those journals, as you would think a post-secondary educational institute should do, UNM wastes more than $1 million per year driving students an easily walkable distance.
Consider the third point: Students hate waiting on the concrete for the bus, and they hate being crammed in it. However well-managed the shuttle service is, students will not like it without extreme upgrades, which are likely financially prohibitive.
The shuttle is great for one reason and one reason alone - it eliminates the need for you to use your legs. No matter how great you think this one reason is, it pales beside the shuttle's negatives:
- The shuttle service requires immense amounts of fossil fuels to move so many mammoth buses around under such fuel-inefficient conditions. Oil prices have increased 75 percent since December, stretching the cost of the shuttle even more. Also, many experts argue the world's fossil fuel supply is declining, and we must conserve now if we hope to have fuel for more important activities in the future.
- The shuttle service is extremely polluting. Try standing behind one as it drives away. See how well the human body processes those fumes.
- The shuttle service's buses are often mostly empty. Although many students complain about peak hour overuse, the reality is that these shuttles run all day, and most of the time they have few passengers.
- UNM is effectively subsidizing a lifestyle that promotes obesity. Our nation has become extremely overweight in the past few decades, and riding a bus for less than a mile rather than walking exemplifies the kind of behavior that has led to our current health epidemic.
We implore students to walk instead of ride - or better yet, ride your bike from home - and ask administrators to rethink this massively inefficient use of financial and natural resources.
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Josh Tybur
Holly Victorson
UNM students
