{"id":403617,"date":"2026-08-11T15:26:30","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:26:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/403617\/"},"modified":"2026-08-11T15:26:30","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T15:26:30","slug":"when-the-bus-stops-campus-shrinks-the-daily-texan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/403617\/","title":{"rendered":"When the bus stops, campus shrinks \u2013 The Daily Texan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"When<\/a> <\/p>\n

Buses can often feel like background noise at UT, humming past Speedway, Guadalupe and Riverside until they blend into the scenery. When something changes, the aftermath highlights what the noise was trying to show all along.<\/p>\n

CapMetro Bikeshare remains suspended<\/a>, and 99.5%<\/a> of workers in the CapMetro system voted in late June to authorize a strike as negotiations over wages and working conditions continue. These disruptions remind us that reliable transit is easiest to ignore while it still functions, and UT students should treat reliable transit as vital to student welfare.<\/p>\n

A bus route may appear like a mere colored line on a map, but it\u2019s the string that connects an apartment to a job shift or doctor\u2019s appointment. When it frays, the city gets smaller for the people with the fewest alternatives.<\/p>\n

Randy Machemehl, professor and associate chair for academic affairs at the Fariborz Maseeh<\/a> Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, said CapMetro began operating UT\u2019s shuttle system to provide<\/a> reliable campus access.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Public transportation) primarily serves people to get to and from work,\u201d Machemehl said. \u201cIn the case of students, from home to school.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the shuttle doesn\u2019t dominate student life as it once did now that many students inhabit West Campus. That decline can deceive students into feeling indifferent to public transit, but for frequent riders, it\u2019s quite the opposite.<\/p>\n

Health and society junior Sruthi Sudakar frequently uses CapMetro to commute between her apartment and job.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a student, it\u2019s a lot easier for me \u2014 especially in an expensive city like Austin \u2014 without having to pay for gas or parking,\u201d Sudakar said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For riders, the inconvenience of unreliability isn\u2019t minor, as a late bus can reroute an entire day; even a 15-minute delay can jeopardize Sudakar\u2019s arrival time.<\/p>\n

Blanca Gamez, director of UT Parking and Transportation Services, frames mobility in that broader sense.<\/p>\n

\u201c(We oversee) mobility programs to best support the campus community by improving access, affordability, safety and convenience,\u201d Gamez said in an email. \u201cThrough (UT\u2019s) partnership with CapMetro, students, faculty and staff can ride most CapMetro services for free with a valid ID, helping them get to places across Austin far beyond campus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, congestion and parking make driving less liberating than students may assume. UT\u2019s campus only has about 17,000<\/a> parking spaces for a daytime population near 70,000, making it infeasible for every student to drive.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf every student had a car, there isn\u2019t any way that they could all park (conveniently on) campus,\u201d Machemehl said.<\/p>\n

A possible bus strike<\/a> should raise questions about why a student body notorious for its concern about social issues treats transit workers and riders as peripheral until these services collapse.<\/p>\n

Public transportation is public because it binds strangers to the promise of everyone reaching their destination. This depends on operators, funding and communication that students rarely notice. We inherit the benefit, then somehow mistake invisibility for irrelevance.<\/p>\n

Student government and campus organizations could promote reliable late-night routes and bus access near campus, gather student feedback during service interruptions and broadcast CapMetro updates when issues arise.<\/p>\n

Students don\u2019t need to regularly ride buses to recognize their importance. It\u2019s more about realizing how independence becomes a commodity when public transportation vanishes.<\/p>\n

The city shrinks quietly at first. Then the bus doesn\u2019t come, and we finally register what was carrying us all along.<\/p>\n

Khan is an advertising junior from Allen, Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Buses can often feel like background noise at UT, humming past Speedway, Guadalupe and Riverside until they blend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-403617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}