Graduate Community Initiative Working Group

The public transportation (specifically TCAT) are nice in principle but very poor in function. This is especially bad in light of Cornell’s efforts to discourage personal driving (through the HUGE cost of parking on campus) and Cornell’s concern about late night safety. Graduate students like to work late, and hold often irregular hours… however, the TCAT bus system becomes very poor after 6:30pm (or before in some locations) and is largely unpractical and non-functional on weekends. Either Cornell needs to run its own private bus system “after hours” or needs to encourage TCAT to step up to the plate here. The “blue light” service is once hourly, and very limited routes. Of personal experience, I have to leave my lab every afternoon, make the >45min round trip home to get my car, and then come back to work… because the bus service does not come but once an hour, rarely on time, and thus inconvenient on at least 2 fronts. Due to this issue, and missing a bus (that either came early, or was so late I assume it came early), I have had to walk home in the dark and cold several times, and far too many times once i do take the bus home in the afternoon, I decide to stay home and not go back to lab… but had the bus system been better, I simply would never had gone home until later, when I was done with more work. Either greatly improve the poor night and weekend bus service, or reduce the cost of parking on campus for graduate students… either solution will ultimately lead to much more work done by use students… and after all, isn’t that what you are paying us to do?