Photo: Dexavier Sturdevant, The Daily Mississippian
In a town where more parking passes are sold than actual spots available on campus, it may be easy to forget that not everyone enjoys the luxury of owning a car. For some, simple actions such as going to class or the grocery require extensive planning.
“I guess I get kind of exasperated because people complain about parking all the time, but you know there’s some other fish to fry,” senior chemistry major Cara Thorne said.
Although most people commute to and from work or class, Oxonians do have a few public transit options. The Oxford Public Transit system offers the Oxford University Transit bus, which offers several routes throughout the city. All routes have stops on campus and run Monday through Saturday. None run later than 9:26 p.m. Zipcar is another option that allows people to rent a car by the hour and is located on the Ole Miss campus.
The OUT bus is primarily used by Ole Miss students, faculty, and staff according to General Manager of Oxford Public Transit Commission Ron Biggs. To keep track of how many people use the buses, OUT drivers click a counter for every passenger that steps on. The counter has sections for general passengers, students, seniors, and disabled riders. The university parking website listed UM students, faculty, and staff as comprising almost 95 percent of the more than 456,000 rides from August 2012 to April 2013. Biggs said September was a record month for the bus systems, with more than 110,000 passengers estimated.
UM custodian Rossie Vaughn said she is pleased with the OUT bus because it allows her to get home from work and run errands since she does not own a car. Since the buses do not run continuously, she said she gets a ride from a co-worker to make it to her 3 a.m. workday start.
“It was great for them to come up with that (the OUT bus) because people that don’t have cars like me or can’t drive like me, they do it for us as well as the students,” Vaughn said.
Although these transit options are available, not everyone is happy with them.
“It takes too long, it’s overcrowded, and the days that I have time to go run errands the buses don’t run. Namely on Sundays,” Thorne said.
Thorne primarily uses her bike to get around and said she is not interested in using Zipcar because paying a $25 membership fee and $8.50 for every hour she uses it is not practical.
“You have to really plan ahead because you have to make sure that you have everything in your bag because really, there’s no option to go back quickly to your apartment to go get stuff,” Thorne said. “Even if you did use public transportation, it wouldn’t be nearly fast enough.”
Senior english major Anthony Larry decided to purchase a car this year because life without one was too inconvenient.
“It’s just much easier when you have a car in this town, on this campus,” Larry said. “Without a car it’s a sort of powerless feeling and you feel like you have to rely on friendships.”
Both Larry and Thorne said not having a car affected many of their life decisions, including where they live. Prior to purchasing his car, Larry said he chose to live on campus because it was easier to get to classes. Thorne limited her housing search to complexes within a reasonable biking distance from campus, even though her roommates considered living somewhere farther away.
Similar to Thorne, Larry feels the buses can unintentionally interrupt one’s personal plans.
“When you make your schedule and you have something planned and you need to be at this place at a certain time to meet this deadline, it’s kind of an inconvenience when the bus runs late,” Larry said.
— Kayleigh Skinner
kaskinne@go.olemiss.edu
