GETTING ON THE BUS; OTHER COMMUNITIES HAVE BENEFITTED FROM UNIVERSITY BUS SYSTEMS

EDITOR'S NOTE: The continuation of this story was inadvertently left of page 2 of Saturday's Southeast Missourian. Here is the complete story.

When City Councilman Melvin Gateley asked Southeast Missouri State University officials whether they would consider expanding the university shuttle system to serve other parts of Cape Girardeau, he didn't know about Carbondale.

When he found out, he was pleasantly surprised.

Until two years ago, Carbondale had no public transportation except taxis. Now it has a public transportation system based at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale that has substantial ridership from the public.

Ken Dobbins, executive vice president of the university, said that was a possibility. In Carbondale, however, the initiative for the bus system came not from the university administration or the city council, but from the students.

Once in the 1970s and twice in the 1980s, the students passed referendums favoring setting up a bus system for students paid for from student fees, said Sean Borman, a systems analyst with Saluki Express, the bus system. The system didn't start until August 1995, after the university's trustees approved, he said.

Currently, students pay $21 a semester for the the bus service. They ride for free with a valid ID. The general public can ride for 50 cents a trip.

Borman, who designed the routes, designed them for students. When school is in session, buses start running on most routes half an hour before classes start and run until 9 p.m. Most run once each hour. A special late-night route circles the campus, hits the dormitories, the library and popular bars, running until midnight Monday through Thursday and until 3:15 a.m. Friday and Saturday.

The routes that have the most non-student riders are two that connect Carbondale's shopping malls with the campus, Borman said. He said the 30-seat buses on that route average 16 passengers at a time, half students, half non-students. Sometimes 60 passengers pack the buses, said Jeff Duke, assistant director of the Saluki Express.

The routes were so popular that the city now subsidizes those two routes between semesters, Borman said.

Carbondale is not unique. DeKalb, Ill., Athens, Ga., Davis, Calif., and Kent, Ohio, all have similar systems -- campus-based bus systems that serve the general public. At Southern Illinois University, the students decided to contract out the operations of the system to the best bidder.

In Kent, the students run the 30-year-old system themselves, with students driving all the buses. The top managers and the mechanics are hired professionals, however, said Jim Soyars, assistant operations director of the Kent State University Bus Service. Soyars graduated from Kent State two years ago.

Kent's system is more extensive, running to nearby Ravenna as well as making regular runs to Akron and Cleveland. It started like Southeast Missouri's shuttle, as a free service just on campus and gradually expanded, Soyars said.

The idea is that if the buses and vans are traveling on the route anyway, they might as well pick up a few fares, Soyars said. If the nursing school needs to shuttle students to hospitals in Akron for clinicals, they might as well fill up the van with others who want to go there.

Like in Carbondale, student fees pay for most of the cost. It gets no government subsidies. Basic fare for the public is $1.

Here in Cape Girardeau, the university shuttle system is still rather modest. It only runs during fall and spring semesters and only has two routes. One runs from 7:30 a.m. to 2 a.m. down North Sprigg Street to the Show Me Center, down New Madrid Street to Henderson Avenue to Normal Avenue and back to Sprigg, while another bus runs the same route in the opposite direction. The other runs from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. back and forth between Dempster and Academic halls. Both are free to everyone.

Occasionally, the university will run a special bus to the West Park Mall.

Some may question if city residents will use the shuttles. Currently the city sells taxi coupons. Residents can buy up to 16 a month for $2 a piece or $1 for elderly and people with handicaps.

Paul Laymon lives downtown and works as a housekeeper at Southeast Hospital. He has no car, buys taxi coupons and uses them to commute to work and shop. He said he'd probably use buses if they were available.

Marlene Limbaugh can't drive because she can't see well enough. The married mother of a boy who will start kindergarten this fall said she'd use a bus if it stopped close enough to her home. She likes the convenience of having a cab pick her up at her door, "but they don't always show up on time. I call an hour ahead of time, and they might show up in five minutes or they might be late."

Other coupon buyers contacted had similar responses.

Gateley said he saw great interest in starting a bus system when he attended meetings to set priorities for the city's transportation sales tax. "We probably need to pursue this," he said.