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March 21, 2024

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Spring Housing Guide

Student government to address TARTA at meeting

Talks of Toledo Area Regional Transit Authority coming to the University continued this week, as the Undergraduate Student Government met with a representative from the student group for TARTA at its Monday meeting.

Sophomore Amanda Milkovich, the representative, spoke to USG to help it determine the best way to proceed. USG was asked recently to endorse the Facebook-based group, “BGSU students for TARTA service.”

“We just wanted to hear their side of the story,” said USG President Emily Ancinec. “We decided that after listening to them that we wanted to bring in the student group as well as a representative from TARTA and an administrator, all to the same meeting so that we can hear all the sides and then decide where we’re going to go from there.”

A date has not yet been set for the meeting, but Ancinec said it will take place in about a month and will be a general assembly meeting open to the public.

“Everyone will present their side of the story and then we’ll go forward from there, so that’s probably going to be the meeting where we decide what kind of action, as a student government, we’re going to take,” Ancinec said.

USG plans to ask TARTA, the University administration and the student group for TARTA the same questions at the meeting.

“I think we’re just going to pose everybody the same questions,” Ancinec said. “‘How do you see TARTA?’ ‘What are the pros and cons of TARTA coming here?’ ‘What issues do you have?'”

USG is staying neutral on the topic until they hear all sides of the proposed plan, Ancinec said.

“I think USG’s role at the time is to really take everything in, figure out what we’re going to do with it and then go to the student body with it,” Ancinec said. “If we hear something that might be good for the students, we’ll go and reach out to people and just kind of spark discussion and debate.”

TARTA general manager James Gee said he thinks the Facebook group and student support is what began the idea of a route to the University.

“[It] sounds like there is some support from the student body,” Gee said. “[I] heard it from one student or a couple students who have put together the Facebook page. I think it’s that initiative, driven by the students, is what started this.”

The University has posed questions to TARTA about how the route would look logistically and are waiting for a response, said Brad Leigh, executive director of business operations at the University.

Leigh personally spoke with a representative from TARTA, but conversation has been minimal, he said.

“We’re not initiating contact with TARTA,” Leigh said. “We asked them to provide information and we have not heard back from them.”

Leigh said there are some unknown answers people should want to know before things proceed, including “What are the services they’re trying to bring to Bowling Green and the students?” and “What is the cost of those services and what is the value of those services?”

TARTA would welcome the opportunity to meet with the administration at the University, Gee said.

“We have not had any discussions with [the University] yet, but certainly would be open to doing that,” Gee said. “I mean I guess I’d be interested in hearing what their comments are.”

For TARTA, the biggest difficulty would be organizing finances, which is something Leigh said he asked TARTA to look into when he initially contacted them in early August.

Gee said he thinks the University’s TARTA program could work similarly to the program TARTA has in place at Owens Community College.

“We have a contract with Owens Community College … a bus route that goes from downtown Toledo to Owens Community College and it goes five days a week, once an hour out to the college,” Gee said. “The students show their student ID and do not pay a fare and we get reimbursed through Owens Community College.”

As far as other logistics of the proposed route go, Gee said it is too soon to tell.

“We would probably want to get some comments from the students who would want to use the service and try to design something that would best meet their needs,” Gee said.

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