New route to campus begins today

By 11:30 a.m. Friday, the Park and Ride parking lot at Bryan Park is full, except for one lone spot in the middle of the back row. Across the street, another Park and Ride lot is nearly empty, with only a few cars sprinkled throughout.\n"It's Friday. There's always less people on Friday," bus driver Rhonda Dyson said with an explanatory shrug. "You know this is the last day for Park and Ride, right?"\nPark and Ride was created 12 years ago by Bloomington Transit to serve students who lived off campus, providing a place to park and shuttle them to campus, free of charge. But in recent months, the residents who live near Bryan Park and on the bus route expressed their dissatisfaction with the system, its noise and continuous loops through their neighborhoods.\nIn response, Bloomington Transit proposed to move the Park and Ride parking lot to the Winslow Sports Complex, but that proposal was rejected at a Bloomington Parks Board meeting Aug. 31. Without a parking lot, the system was eliminated and a new shuttle express program began today.\n"I love that I won't be driving this route anymore," Dyson said. "Woodlawn is too narrow for a bus like this. But I feel bad for the students. I know that's why a lot of them moved out here."\nJunior Josh Kreigh boards the bus after his criminal justice class and sits down heavily in a seat.\n"I think this is horrible," he said. "I think this will be inconvenient for a lot of students."\nKreigh, who used Park and Ride since last year, tried a variety of ways to get to campus before settling on the system.\n"I tried walking to class," he said, "but in the winter, when it snowed, no one cleaned the sidewalk. And if I walked on the street, cars would come close to hitting me."\nDyson makes one loop after another picking up students from class and dropping them off at their cars, picking them up at their cars and dropping them off at class, calling out each stop before she reaches it.\n"They should have kept Park and Ride," junior Josh Shideler said. "The new system is a pretty big inconvenience."\nDyson said she's looking forward to driving a bigger bus for the new route. She hopes it will help with some of the overcrowding, because she hates having to leave students standing in the cold when the bus is already full.\n"The students are so nice," she said. "They always say 'please' and 'thank you.'"\nShe said she has heard some students say the new shuttle will be more convenient for them, but feels bad for the ones it will trouble.\nBloomington Transit passed out fliers explaining the new express shuttle, which will run every 15 minutes along Henderson and Walnut streets. The schedule and map of the route are available online at www.bloomingtontransit.com, but sophomore Angela Groff hasn't been able to make sense of them yet.\n"I don't know where the new system picks up or drops off. And I'll still have to drive somewhere to park," said Groff. "I really don't know how I'm going to get to class now."\n-- Contact senior writer Kathleen Quilligan at