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  UB employees use alternative forms of transportation to get to work.

  

  The Transit Warrior: Nate Drag, graduate student. | View slideshow

  

  The Carpooler: James Drzymala, Oracle database administrator. | View slideshow

  

  The Cyclist: Michael Belus, senior programmer/analyst. | View slideshow

  

  The Walker: Kathryn Foster, director of the UB Regional Institute. | View slideshow

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  Alternatives for going “car free”

By CHARLOTTE HSU

Published: January 14, 2010

A few minutes before 8 a.m. one morning last November, Kathryn Foster, director of the UB Regional Institute, stepped out into the world from the front door of her yellow home in a residential neighborhood just south of Hertel Avenue. She pulled on black leather gloves and, umbrella in hand, began a half-mile trek to the rail station on Amherst Street.

It was cold, the sky an iced gray, a thick sheet of silver clouds overhead. But Foster was full of energy, just happy to be outside. The city was alive with the signs of seasons turning. Up and down every street, trees stand with their naked limbs stretched upward, having shed their leaves.

In her 16 years at UB, Foster has commuted to work on foot whenever possible. Traffic and searching for parking make her hostile, she says, so better to leave the car at home. With the UB Regional Institute recently relocating to the UB Downtown Gateway, Foster walks to the Metro Rail station and rides the train downtown. Her two-part trip takes about 20 minutes if she times everything right. Before the institute moved, Foster would walk from her home to the South Campus, a journey of just over a mile.

“It’s healthy. It clears my head,” Foster says of her commute. “When it’s snowing or cold, it feels righteous... I listened to the radio this morning, and the traffic report comes on and it tells me about traffic tie-ups and slowdowns, and here’s what happening on the Kensington, and here’s what’s going on on the 290 or whatever, and I don’t have to listen to that.”

Exploring travel options

How will students, faculty and staff move about UB’s three campuses? What travel options are being considered? How can we transform UB into a world-class academic center while minimizing impacts on surrounding communities and the environment?

These are some of the questions the UB community is pondering as the university moves forward with UB 2020, the long-range planning initiative that aims to bring 10,000 additional students and 6,700 more staff and faculty members to Buffalo.

The university’s success in mitigating traffic and pollution will hinge on decisions individuals make. Each day, students, staff and faculty members are discovering new ways to travel to and from UB’s three campuses.

The number of people riding university shuttles has increased 16 percent over four years, according to figures supplied by Parking and Transportation Services. The UB Stampede, a free bus service that ferries passengers between the South and North campuses, has seen ridership increase by 27 percent over the same period. Along with people, the fleet has transported 3,800 bicycles this year on racks affixed to the front of the vehicles. Carpooling also is en vogue, with field research conducted in 2008 showing that more than 17 percent of cars arriving on the South Campus and more than 9 percent on the North Campus carried multiple riders.

Many students and employees trying alternative forms of transportation for the first time say getting started was the hardest part. Once they began carpooling, walking, biking or riding the bus and shuttles, they embraced their new commutes.

Carpoolers enjoy saving money on gas and having company on the ride to work. Walkers and bikers say their commute leaves them feeling healthy and refreshed. People who take public transportation like being able to read or catch up on work while riding. They point out that on days when they need to drive alone, they still can.

To encourage members of the UB community to consider new ways of getting to work, the university held its first-ever Commuter Challenge this September, giving prizes to participants who used sustainable forms of transportation on a regular basis over a four-week period. The goodies ranged from monthly Metro passes to umbrellas to bicycle gear, such as bells and handlebar tape.

Of about 80 people who took part, half changed the way they commuted at least temporarily, says Jim Simon, associate environmental educator for UB Green, one of the offices that co-sponsored the activity. For employees and students who already were carpooling, walking, biking or taking public transit, the challenge, to be repeated next fall, fostered a sense of community.

“This is the direction UB 2020 is pointing us toward—less single-occupancy vehicles on campus,” Simon says. “More transit, more options for cyclists and carpoolers. And I think we showed, in a small way, that the aspirations of UB 2020 can be realized on campus. Looking at my list of 80 people, I only recognized maybe a handful. Everyone else was new to me. It wasn’t just a fringe group of people who participated. It wasn’t the usual suspects.”

Personal commuting stories

For the four weeks of the Commuter Challenge, Jennifer Morrison felt more in touch with her surroundings. A resident of Buffalo’s Parkside neighborhood, she would walk from her home to the Humboldt-Hospital Metro Rail station, ride the train to the South Campus and transfer onto the UB Stampede, the university bus that runs between the North and South campuses. At the end of the workday, she would return using the same modes of transit, but in reverse—the Stampede, the city rail and then the stroll home. The new commute was a change from driving alone.

“When I would walk from the train station to my house every evening, I would see people—people coming home from work, people walking through the train station,” says Morrison, director of Student Support Services, a federal program housed at UB that provides comprehensive academic support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. “I would notice more things—who was home, who wasn’t home, who was doing what. I would have conversations. I would meet colleagues who worked in other offices. It’s good to be a part of your community.”

For Morrison, the university-sponsored challenge and the goal of reducing her carbon footprint spurred her new commute.

For others, the impetus for trying a new form of transit was different: Michael Belus, senior programmer/analyst in Administrative Computing Services, started biking to work this April from North Tonawanda to stay in shape. James Drzymala, an Oracle database administrator in the same department, began carpooling with a colleague several years ago, almost on a whim.

“2005 was Hurricane Katrina. Gas prices, as you probably remember, just surged,” says Drzymala, who lives in West Seneca. “And a friend of mine who lives in the Southtowns suggested to me, said, ‘Gee, we should carpool together. This is ridiculous.’ It was an off-hand comment. I think he was saying it tongue in cheek. But we tried it, and we never looked back.”

“We didn’t know if it was going to work, just because of our own personal commitments with families. We found it was actually easier than we thought it would be,” Drzymala says. “It works out fine.”

The arrangement has been so successful that a third colleague has joined. The trio typically travels together about three days per week, planning their schedules in advance via e-mail. They take turns driving, switching off from week to week. When they can’t make the carpool work, they don’t try to force it.

Many people who try a new commute discover that the benefits extend beyond their original reasons for leaving their car at home. Besides saving money by reducing his gas consumption, Drzymala enjoys the company on the way to work. “Occasionally, the guy in the back seat will just put his head back and go to sleep, but usually we’re engaged in some pretty good conversation.”

Belus says that while he started biking for health reasons, he put so few miles on his car during the spring and summer that he only had to fill up his gas tank once a month. On the Metro and Stampede, Morrison found time to relax and read, with a collection of love stories from The New Yorker to keep her company.

“Sometimes on the train I would hear myself—I was crying and laughing out loud at different points in the stories,” Morrison recalls.

Still, despite the advantages of alternative forms of transportation, UB and members of the university community have a long way to go. For many students and employees, commuting to work without driving alone is not yet convenient.

Morrison, for one, returned to driving alone after the Commuter Challenge ended. She points out that riding the metro cost $1.75 each way—more than she spends on gas when she brings her car to campus. And the Stampede was so popular, she says, that she sometimes had trouble getting a seat on the first bus that arrived.

Recognizing such problems, the university is looking to improve the speed and ease with which commuters can get to campus without their cars. Officials are collaborating with regional transportation partners to explore such options as extending Buffalo’s rail system to the North Campus or using modern streetcars to connect the North and South campuses.

UB’s comprehensive physical plan, as well as its climate action plan, call for a “one-seat-ride” from the Downtown Campus to the North Campus, eliminating the need for commuters to switch vehicles along the way, says Robert G. Shibley, professor of architecture and planning and a senior advisor to President John B. Simpson on the comprehensive plan.

“That may be a number of years away,” says Shibley, “but once we achieve it, it will have a huge return on investment, not only to UB but to the entire region.”

Other improvements already are under way. In recent years, cyclists may have noticed the installation of new bike racks on university grounds and the addition of on-campus hubs where people can borrow bicycles through the Buffalo Blue Bicycles lending program. The university also has joined Good Going WNY, a carpool-matching service for employees, and implemented the UB Carpool Program, which allows frequent ridesharers to obtain a permit for some of the best parking spaces on campuses.

“As the campus looks to potentially add 10,000 students and thousands of additional staff and faculty members, we are looking to contribute to the president’s commitment to climate neutrality and provide alternatives to bringing personal vehicles to campus,” says Chris Austin, assistant director of the Office of Parking and Transportation Services, which runs the carpool program, operates campus buses and shuttles, and leads efforts to encourage bicycling at UB. “The benefits of lessening traffic on campus range from increased safety to reduced pollution.”

“We’re providing a menu of services that can contribute to fewer single-occupant vehicles coming to campus, and we are educating and encouraging students, faculty and staff members to use alternative means of transportation,” Austin continues. “Society’s reliance on personal motor vehicles is a regional and cultural issue. We are putting options on the table to show people that there are other modes of transportation to choose from.”