Director of Transportation Services Jack Molenaar constantly shifted gears at the Douglass Governing Council meeting last night, talking about exam busing hours, a prospective University bicycle system and parking deck permits during his discussion at Trayes Hall in the Douglass Student Center.
Molenaar, now in his fourth year as director, briefly barreled through an explanation of the University’s transportation system before taking questions.
Due to complaints and requests, Molenaar said he moved unused bus hours from reading days to exam days and fewer buses will be available on reading days.
Transportation Services will monitor the success of the new plan and tweak it in the spring, he said.
Molenaar said he added more buses to exam days because it reflected academic urgency.
“Weekends and nights are not my priority,” Molenaar said.
Buses are often scarce for exams that do not fit within the existing exam schedules because academic departments do not notify the transportation department, Molenaar said. He would like to have more buses available during irregular exam hours.
“We have a bit of flexibility in budget to add buses for something like that,” Molenaar said.
He also addressed complaints about bus drivers being preoccupied while driving.
Rutgers University Student Assembly Representative Vanity Jenkins said her father was bothered by the sight of University bus drivers who were texting, reading and talking on cell phones while driving.
Molenaar said there is no reason for drivers to be on cell phones while driving.
“They can maintain contact with [Transportation Services] through radios. There’s no need for cell phones,” Molenaar said.
He said if students witness negligent driving, they should contact Transportation Services and give them the exact spot the incident occurred, the bus’s number, the route and the time of day.
“Once the driver has too many complaints, they will be removed,” he said.
Molenaar has received requests for a campus-wide bicycle system.
After External Vice President Kate Barbour asked Molenaar to discuss his plans, he said establishing a bicycle system before a network in the city and surrounding areas are built would be ineffective.
Many areas would still be difficult to navigate and the University’s system would seem useless, Molenaar said. Building bicycle facilities also takes a long time.
“Bike-sharing is something Rutgers will eventually do,” Molenaar said. “We are making sure to build bicycle-friendly roads.”
With so many buses at the University, the representative for transfer and nontraditional students Irina Ushakov asked if Transportation Services would be examining more environmentally-friendly buses when it puts its busing contract out to bid in 2011.
Molenaar said hybrid buses cost twice as much to purchase and cost more for the same system. He said he would rather put a working University bicycle network into place first.
“That would take more fumes out of the air,” he said.
Molenaar also discussed recent changes to the University’s parking permits.
Internal Vice President Emily Rogalsky asked why the new separate parking permits for Cook and Douglass campuses differ in pricing and Molenaar said maintaining parking decks costs more, so the parking deck permit was recently raised.
He said he applied the principles of capitalism to parking deck permit prices recently and found that the permits still sell out relatively fast.
Switching to the Nextbus system, Senator Valerie Weiss brought up the DGC’s new resolution to put a Nextbus sign at the Katzenbach Hall stop.
Molenaar said he supported the idea but installing a new Nextbus sign at that stop would be expensive, as the stop needs to be completely redone.
“I’m glad you want to do that. That gives me support,” he said.
Switching back to bus routes, Molenaar addressed complaints with the REXB buses.
RUSA representative Kyrie Graziosi said students experience difficulty getting onto a REXB bus during peak hours.
Molenaar said pushing for more dedicated bus lanes in New Brunswick and Piscataway is a possibility.
Molenaar answers student complaints at council forum
Published: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Updated: Tuesday, November 10, 2009
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