The corner of East Colvin Street and Comstock Avenue presents an invitation for the communities of the Southside and Syracuse University to become acquainted by a mere bus route. But transportation isn’t equally accessible to all in the city, creating a divide between Syracuse residents and SU students.

Accessing downtown from campus is easier than accessing Syracuse’s Southside. The Centro bus system should add routes from SU’s campus to surrounding neighborhoods to address a lack of transportation and to further connection between students and Syracuse residents.

Nyla Moore, a first-year architectural graduate student, said the Centro bus system on campus runs well. But she doesn’t take it as often as she has in the past due to packed buses and concerns about being late to class. For students who want to go beyond campus, the Centro bus system is not always helpful, Moore said.

“It is definitely limiting on where you can go,” Moore said. “I think more routes would be helpful, cause a lot of our buses in general have to go through the hub downtown to go to anywhere else. I don’t see why they couldn’t make more direct routes.” 

The lack of more direct routes remains a problem, she said. More direct routes would help riders, whether they are out on an errand or working in an off-campus neighborhood, Moore said.

For some commuters, public transportation is their only source of getting around. But distance and time can also create problems for riders. 

“The bus goes where the bus goes at the time that the bus goes. But people are necessarily going throughout their lives at bus times or bus locations,” said Deborah Hundley, president, founder and CEO of Providence Services of Syracuse Inc. Providence Services of Syracuse is a nonprofit that works to help low-income residents get around Syracuse when public transportation is not an option.

The lack of public transportation is something those whom the nonprofit serves notice immediately, Hundley said. 

“Oh, they all know it, they know it, day one,” she said.

Hundley began the nonprofit after she learned how a lack of public transportation impacts employment opportunities for people both in Syracuse and around the world. Despite the need for the services, there’s only so much she and her organization can do, she said.

“If we had greater resources, there (would be) thousands of people just in the city of Syracuse that could use our services, but we don’t have the resources for that,” she said.

Distance plays a role in creating the high demand for the nonprofit’s services. Providence Services caters to those who can’t ride the bus not only due to time but also due to location. Riders in the program need help being transported to jobs outside of downtown.

“It’s a catch-22: you want people to work. People want to work, but they can’t get to the jobs and they can’t get home,” Hundley said.

Various studies over the last decade show just how much public transportation plays a role in employment. Time and distance are two issues that Steve Koegel, vice president of communications and business planning of Centro, is aware of. 

Before the coronavirus pandemic, a variety of riders depended on the bus. Now, the ridership has changed, Koegel said.

“The only people who are riding public transportation right now, for the most part, are people who are transit-dependent,” he said.

Centro is always looking to improve through constant reevaluation of its services, Koegel said. Riders can expect to see changes in various services, mainly an increase in bus frequency, he said.

“We’re looking probably within the year at the frequency of service to our busiest bus lines, which also happen to be in locations where we have the most individuals who are the most transit-dependent, they don’t have access to a car,” Koegel said.

Low-income neighborhoods have a greater need for public transportation. Public transportation reflects inequalities and solutions all at once. The transportation shows the wealth disparities between neighborhoods and serves as a key way for residents of those neighborhoods to better their own economic standing by connecting them to job opportunities across Syracuse. Expanding bus service into these under-served communities is key to bettering Syracuse as a whole.

Camille Daniels is a graduate student in the magazine, newspaper and online journalism program. Her column appears bi-weekly. She can be reached at cdaniels@syr.edu.

 

Published on September 27, 2020 at 9:48 pm