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Now a senior and of drinking age, University student Julie Long goes downtown almost every Thursday to enjoy Bowling Green’s nightlife.

Smart enough to walk to and from her home near Mercer Street and avoid the temptation of driving drunk, Long knows classmates who do get behind the wheel intoxicated because walking just isn’t an option.

As more apartment complexes are built further away from the downtown area, students in Bowling Green are facing the choice of driving to bars and businesses on Main Street at night – or not going at all.

But if there was another option to get home at night – like a bus route from Main Street to different points in the city – Long thinks students would appreciate it more than anyone could imagine.

“It’d be great [a bus route] because it’d be a lot safer for people walking home, and it’d keep people out of trouble with police,” Long said.

Bowling Green’s DUI arrests so far in 2005 have reached 496 – nearly 100 more than at the same time last year.

Police attribute the rise to stricter law enforcement, the recently lowered blood alcohol content level and the “Drink and Drive, You Lose” education campaign from Ohio’s Department of Public Safety.

But all the educational efforts in the world won’t stop most 21-year-olds from drinking, Long said, and making alternative choices available like a safe bus ride option could quell students’ temptation to drive home.

At Kent State University students do have an alternative choice – they call it “the drunk bus.”

Regardless of the nickname, Kent’s busing runs a special route on Thursday and Friday nights from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. around campus, to the bars and back again.

Kent’s student senate generated the idea for the late night bus route and worked hard to make it happen, according to Frank Hairston, marketing director for the Portage Area Regional Transport Authority, which handles all of Kent’s campus busing.

Student response to the route has been good, and though business growth is hard to quantify, Hairston said safer streets make everyone more eager to go downtown.

“I think certain businesses like that,” Hairston said. “It also helps cut down student’s drinking and driving.”

Though he’s not sure if it’ll increase his business, Uptown/Downtown Assistant Manager Cliff Reeves thinks a bus route would help students avoid DUI’s, or fights as they walk home at night.

Students have asked if there’s a local taxi service to get a ride late at night, but the few cab providers aren’t open that late into the night, Reeves said.

At Northern Illinois University a portion of student fees goes toward NIU’s bus service, which runs late-night routes on Friday and Saturday through the town and campus.

Though other students may share Long’s hope for a late-night bus route to and from the downtown area, Fred Smith, director of BGSU’s shuttle service, thinks it could cause more harm than good.

Smith has discussed the idea with both campus and city police, requesting an officer to ride on the bus for safety reasons during the late routes.

Both police departments said it would be a “poor use of manpower,” Smith said.

But Melinda Gurgul, senior, would be willing to pay for the service.

Gurgul, who lives in University Village just down the street from Long, walks to Main Street at least twice a week to visit the bars and restaurants.

But when snow starts falling and the Bowling Green wind is blowing, that trip downtown becomes less attractive.

Gurgul said she’d shell out up to $5 to board one of the University’s shuttle buses if they made the rounds from downtown to different drop-off points in the city, “especially in the winter so I didn’t have to walk,” she said.

But Smith is afraid that once students begin bringing money onto buses, it may make his drivers a target for robbery.

And the potential for a shuttle service to turn into a babysitter for college students – and promote poor choices – is something Bowling Green’s Deputy Chief of Police Gary Spencer is leery of.

“I’m all in favor of people getting home safely, whether it’s a bus system or a friend,” Spencer said. “But I’m afraid it [the bus option] may encourage some to drink more instead of less.”

USG President Aaron Shumaker is confident that a late-night bus route to and from Main Street would be well received by students, but he’s concerned that it may open the University up to liability issues.

Because there are so many wrinkles to the issue, weekend bus routes downtown is something that USG will be looking into more closely, Shumaker said.

The topic was discussed by student and city leaders in late spring 2005 by the BG Connections Committee, according to Jill Carr, committee chair.

Carr said that the issue would be on the agenda for BG Connection’s meeting this fall – which has yet to be scheduled – and that updated evidence and statistics may be presented.

An alternative route home from downtown for University students is something that members of MADD Ohio (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) would like to see, according to Doug Scoles, executive director.

“We talk all day to our youth about making smart choices on ways to get home, but when the means aren’t there, they’re more apt to make a bad choice,” Scoles said.

As a student, Long respects the University and BGPD for trying to support smart choices, and abstinence from alcohol when possible.

But she knows the demand from BGSU upperclassmen is there for a bus route to and from Main Street.

“I think there are a lot of freshmen and sophomores who don’t drink,” Long said. “But there are a lot of 21-year-olds and 22-year-olds who do, and this bus service could really benefit them.”

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