Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Revival of the Bengal Bus??

Upon browsing Oxy's website, I came across a page directed towards prospective students regarding transportation in Los Angeles. The college lists four modes of transportation while living on campus: walking, driving, public transportation, and "shuttle bus," commonly referred to current students as the Bengal Bus. After reading this, I realized that I've maybe heard of/considered using the Bengal Bus' services at most, once or twice, since learning about it on a tour of Oxy as a high school senior. I believe that I can represent a great majority of the student body in this experience. Being a part of the alternative transportation team, I think that this is an another easy project that we should conquer--to spread the popularity and usage of the Bengal Bus. Although we should keep progress with our other main goals of implementing a shared bike and zip car program, in the meantime, we could easily take on this smaller project on the side. Since we are a relatively big group in the class, I don't think this would cause much burden at all. It would also provide an immediate alternative transportation solution, as the service is already in practice...just not taken advantage of.

What we could do as a group (or within the group) is maybe look into advertising for this service. Though it is already advertised on the small white board outside the student center in the quad, we should blow this up to a greater scale. We might want to look into posting flyers with the schedule, post the schedule in the digest, etc. Before advertising, a survey might also be good to distribute to quantify how many people use the Bengal Bus, how many people are aware of the Bengal Bus, how many people know its schedule, location, etc.

oxy.edu claims that "A free “Bengal Bus” shuttle service is available to you and your guests. The shuttles, which run every half hour on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, go to local restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, and DVD/video rental stores, as well as the Glendale Galleria and Old Pasadena." In addition to these "luxury trips," the Bengal Bus also provides rides during the weekdays for people who need to simply run errands. The schedule is as follows:

Mondays

6:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Eagle Rock Errands (Target, CVS, Trader Joe's Loop)

Tuesdays

6:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Eagle Rock Errands (Target, CVS, Trader Joe's Loop)

Thursdays

6:00 pm - 10:00 pm: Eagle Rock Errands (Target, CVS, Trader Joe's Loop)

Honestly, who actually knew about the frequency and destinations of the Bengal Bus??! With this knowledge, even with a car on campus, I might consider taking advantage of this resource! Let me know what you all think and if it is something we should pursue!


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2 comments:

  1. mark vallianatosOctober 15, 2009 at 12:02 PM

    Good ideas, your team can discuss today. Maybe there's a way to link roll out of a bike and zip car program with new attention to the bengal bus, for a three pronged alternative transportation approach (four if we count making people more aware of public transit, despite its difficulties)

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  2. Maddisen DomingoOctober 15, 2009 at 4:11 PM

    I think this is a really great idea. It's a shame when resources exist but are underutilized due to lack of publicity. As we gain more momentum with our separate projects I think we should begin to utilize the facebook group we created earlier. This will be a great way to get information out to the Oxy population and emphasizing the Bengal Buses is a good place to start. As for the bike sharing program and zip car, this may take awhile, but we can start developing advertisements for Bengal Bus and public transportation tips now.

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