Case Study: WCC Should Provide Free Rides To Students And Staff

Greyza Perez
Susan Mullen
ENG 226 Sec. DL4
April 16, 2014
WCC Should Provide Free Rides to Students and Staff

WCC has built a new parking lot to accommodate more students in the fall and we do not need it because most of the time the other parking lots are vacant. On January 2011, the college started building the new parking structure which destroyed the woods, trees, and disturbed the Writing Center’s atmosphere in the process. In the future people will use the structure and for much of the year there will be big, ugly, empty parking lots. WCC should work with AAATA to provide free rides like the MRide that the University of Michigan offers to students and staff with the Yellow Cards. During February of 2013, one of the bus drivers,
A friend said, on June 8, 2013, “people should walk.” (Should People Walk) From a health prospective, this is true because most people at WCC park closer to the buildings and don’t want to walk as far. Another is that students who live in Ann Arbor should take the bus because then they will have access to ride the bus and the new train in the following years with the Master Transit Plan proposed by the AAATA. In addition, it will provide more parking spaces to people who don’t live in Ann Arbor who commute from all over the surrounding areas. For example, my MTH 169 teacher, Mr. King, would commute from Farmington to Ann Arbor every day. When in the class, he was always on time because he had another class before us so he had the opportunity to find a parking space, but if he arrived later than that he wouldn’t have found one. Another example was in winter 2012, my boyfriend’s mother had exited the Bailey Library, and immediately a person asked her for her parking space. When my boyfriend was walking to the space, he saw his old ACS 107 teacher, Ms. Fragner, and she wanted his parking space, but unfortunately he had given it to the person
The AATA has been creating a Master Transit Program that would include expanding service to other parts of Washtenaw County like Dexter, Ypsilanti, Milan, Saline, Manchester, and Chelsea (The Smart Growth Countywide). The plan would be able to go to many different places in Washtenaw County and improve or include “Urban Bus Network, Local Circulators, Door-2-Door, Vanpools, Airport Service, More Park & Rides, (more) Biking paths, More Hubs, Flex Service, Express Service, Rail Services (like WALLY), and Bus Stops” (The Smart Growth Countywide). The stops would include things like The Link, which was a little shuttle that shuttled people downtown and had little meters that displayed the time that the next bus would come. One day, on route 3, one person said in a faint voice, “Why can’t WCC have their own bus? That is a good idea because during the 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. rush there are a lot of WCC students and people who use that bus and it is even more crowded when they have VA people.” As stated in the AATA MRide benefits, it helps the city out. The benefits