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March 21, 2024

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Spring Housing Guide

A solution for your traffic woes

Last Friday, around 5 p.m., I was driving down East Wooster Street. Luckily, I was going downtown, because in the other direction, toward Interstate 75, there was a traffic nightmare.

Cars were lined up from the gas stations near the interstate to Founders – a least a mile long.

The line was, I assume, students using Monday’s day off to head home for the weekend. I was with my girlfriend at the time, and as we drove by, she asked, “Why don’t they just carpool?”

I thought about this question for a moment. Then I, too, wondered, “Why don’t they just carpool?”

So now I ask: Why don’t you all just carpool? Why don’t both students and the University take steps to promote carpools or public transportation during long weekends, when students are most likely going home for a few days?

Of course, maybe lots of students already are carpooling, and the line of cars I saw would have been that much longer had they not been.

But there’s not much evidence, at least on the Web, to suggest that’s happening.

MyBGSU offers a “Ride Board” message board under the “Community” tab for every student on campus. But by my count, four people posted looking for a carpool or offering one. There’s a “BGSU Ride Board” group on Facebook that received a total of one post – someone looking for a passenger on her trip to Cincinnati.

Is carpooling really that unpopular? Why?

Chances are there’s someone who needs to go to roughly the same place as you. It’s a state school, so most of the undergraduates are Ohio residents – in fact, around 90 percent of them are, according to the Office of Institutional Research.

Use the Facebook group that’s already online, or the MyBGSU page and find people who need to go to the same place and want to go around the same time.

Rework your schedules a bit if you need to -if you think it’s too hard, just look at the benefits you miss out on.

First, carpooling is cheap. You probably already know that $2.50 or more for a tank of gas adds up quickly, even if you’re going somewhere close to Bowling Green. If you get four people in your car, you’ve cut your costs to around 75 cents a gallon.

Second, it saves you time. Think of the traffic jam you faced trying to get to I-75 leaving BG, or trying to get back. Now think of that traffic jam with half of the traffic, or less.

Third, it’s better for the environment. Every fewer car off the road going home is that much less exhaust spewing into the atmosphere.

Officials at the University have room to get into this act, too.

First, they can promote the Ride Board site. Don’t hide it from students when they first log into MyBGSU, as it is at least on my version of it. Why not put a link on the default screen?

Better yet, put a link on the bgsu.edu main page, or advertise around campus to students that it’s an available service.

If the University really wants to get involved, it can use our buses to create a series of routes that would spread across Ohio. One bus hits towns around, say, 50 miles from BG, another goes 100 miles, and so on. Parents or friends could pick up students at each stop.

Even if those parents and friends have to drive a few miles to get to the stop, that’s still a few hundred miles less than having individual students drive to their hometowns.

Obviously the bus system would take some time to plan and implement. With tight budgets abound this year, it probably won’t be on the radar screen soon.

And of course, some students wouldn’t have a car at home if they went with a group. That’s a sacrifice I suppose we’d have to make.

Perhaps students are already taking advantage of the fact that they live in a dorm with access to lots of other students. Maybe carpools are springing up that way, no technology required – I don’t really have a way to tell.

But let’s hope they are, and if they’re not, that they get moving before Fall Break in October.

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