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metro news Students take the reins for U. of Montana transit system Initiated in 1999, the Associated Students of the University of Montana Offi ce of Transportation (ASUM) began a unique transportation service for its students, staff, faculty and community. "There was a recommendation from a campus and community-wide trans- portation committee that we needed an offi ce to promote transportation options," explained Nancy Wilson, di- rector of ASUM. "At the time, the uni- versity said they had no funding to do that, so the students imposed a $4 stu- dent fee on themselves and started ASUM Transportation to promote those transportation options." The creation of ASUM resulted in a small van service that eventually grew to a nine transit bus operation, which grew from serving 3,600 passengers in its fi rst year to 445,000 in 2011. So what's so unique about ASUM's program? It's all student run. "We have all student drivers, which is a great thing to do," explained Wil- son. "We have a top-notch, nationally- certifi ed training program, and many of our students end up using their commercial licenses to pay for their ed- ucation." ASUM's board is also composed of all students who oversee an annual budget of $1 million. "It really gets a lot of young people invested in the transit industry and the transportation options industry, and many of the students on that board end up going out into community planning jobs, transit agency jobs and higher degrees in the transportation sector," said Wilson, who, in her capac- ity, carries out what the students want, educates the ever-changing board, and attends community and university planning meetings. One of the positives of having a board that changes every year is that it allows ideas to be used and reassessed several times. Service was successfully tried a third time from a park & ride. One slight drawback of the program, said Wilson, is that, because the board is comprised of about 12 to 15 stu- dents, ranging from freshman to grad- uate program students each year, there is an obviously high turnover rate and learning curve. "It takes the board about three months every year to get their feet un- der them, because transportation fund- ing is complicated and the politics of transportation is complicated," ex- plained Wilson. "We try to get students that will be on the board more than a year, so we have some continuity." One of the positives to having a board that changes nearly every year, said Wilson, is that it allows ideas to sometimes be used and reassessed sev- eral times. "We don't get stuck in that place that a lot of transit agencies get into, where they say 'we've tried that and it didn't work,'" she said. "When you have a young board, and you say that, they usually will say, 'let's try again.'" One example of that mentality is how the system began, when service was tried from a park & ride for the third time and accomplished success. ASUM now provides service from two park & rides south and two park & rides east of the university, as well as two shuttles between the Missoula College, formerly College of Technol- 8 < mETRO mAGAZINE SEPTEMBER • OCTOBER 2012 ogy, and main campus. Like many universities today, ASUM also runs a successful late-night shuttle service, dubbed UDash, six nights a week. When UDash service hours were recently extended from midnight to 2:30 a.m. on Thursdays, ridership in- creased 133%, with Friday and Satur- day night usage also increasing 58% in 2011, compared to the previous year. Additionally, ASUM runs two suc- cessful bicycling programs that help students get around its approximate one-square-mile campus. The Cruiser Co-Op program allows students to check out a bicycle for a two-day peri- od free of charge with a valid school identifi cation, while a semester bicycle program enables students to rent a bi- cycle, helmet, light and lock for an en- tire semester for only $35. "The semester program is really nice for our international students," said Wilson. "Currently, we have 35 bicycles available for that program and 50 for our Cruiser program, and would like to increase both of those numbers soon." Currently, ASUM has no plans ex- pand services but is working with its local transit system, the Missoula Ur- ban Transportation District, to grow their services in the community. "We would like to see community- wide transit service every 15 minutes, until at least 11 p.m.," Wilson said. metro-magazine.com Photo courtesy University of Montana