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What do you get when you take 13,000 college students and four major campus locations and stir in a tangle of city streets prone to serious rush hour traffic and a curving river with a limited number of bridges, not all of them able to support the weight of a bus? Answer: A logistical transportation nightmare.
The good news: The University has this semester put new features and systems in place to make getting around campus easier and more effective, including a new route that will bring students downtown and back, giving them more opportunity to enjoy the entertainment, retail and cultural offerings of the city.
“This is very significant,” says Provost Ahmed Abdelal. “This is a great improvement not only for students, but for faculty and staff.”
Moving thousands of students from residence halls to classroom buildings at North and South campuses multiple times a day has always been a challenge at UMass Lowell, but that challenge ramped up this year in the wake of rocketing enrollment and the addition of the new UMass Lowell Inn & Conference Center downtown, where 400 students now live.
“I’ve spoken to colleagues at many other campuses, and I know of no other campus with this complex set of transportation challenges,” say Larry Siegel, dean of students. Most campuses are in a self-contained area, separated from the surrounding town or city, or at least clustered in one area without a river and traffic in between.
The problem landed squarely in the lap of Nicholas Piscitello, associate director of the University’s Student Affairs, and the man in charge of transportation. His solution: a major overhaul of transportation services with more buses, more vans, more routes, more staff and more hours of service.
Piscitello got a big boost from the University with a 30 percent increase in the transportation budget and support and encouragement from the senior administration to make life easier and more efficient for students and employees who have to move around campus frequently.
A consultant, MDM Transportation of Marlboro, was hired over the summer to analyze existing routes. The firm found that the existing breakdown of routes was the most efficient, but that more buses running longer and on a more regular basis would help significantly.
“They looked at every scenario, from establishing one giant loop to establishing a hybrid of large and small loops,” says Piscitello.
Starting this semester, the three buses that carry students on the North-South route and the two buses that carry them on the South-East route will stay in service through the afternoon rush hour instead of dropping by one bus per route at 3 p.m. The routes will drop a bus at 5:30 p.m., but the remaining buses will stay in service until 6:30 p.m. instead of stopping at 6 p.m. This will allow overlap with the van shuttle service that begins at 6 p.m. and continues until 1 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and to 3 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.
“Our goals are consistency and reliability,” adding that there is “a renewed focus on customer service.” Buses will now run on a schedule, with waits of only between 10 to 15 minutes, except when traffic causes unavoidable delays. Shuttles, meanwhile, will not end at scheduled times as long as any students are still waiting for rides.
A new route, the yellow line, shuttles students from the Inn & Conference Center downtown, formerly the Doubletree Hotel, to either North or South Campus.
Another new route is the Downtown Service, which began Oct. 5 and will bring students to two locations (Market Street at the Leo Roy parking garage and the corner of Merrimack and John streets). The service will run Monday through Friday starting at 7 p.m., Saturdays starting at 6 p.m. and Sundays starting at 10:30 a.m.
Another new feature will add shuttle service between residence halls and the Tsongas Arena for home hockey games.
The North Reading Transportation Co. is running the buses during weekdays. UMass Lowell owns the vans and hires the drivers – many of them students – that handle the evening and weekend service. The University bought two new vans this year, bringing the fleet to three small vans and four large vans, including two that can accommodate wheelchairs.
The campus is working with the Lowell Regional Transportation Authority to align city bus schedules with the arrival and departure of trains at Gallagher Terminal, making the use of public transportation to campus easier.
“Our goal is to keep people out of cars in the city as much as possible,” says Piscitello.