The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

The Channels

EDITORIAL: Fix the buses

Every year the number of parking permits issued for each space gets higher and the college tells students to carpool, ride a bike or take the bus.
Take the bus? Sure, just let me clear my schedule first.
To get from the Westside to City College takes over an hour on the bus. Not only do the busses run so infrequently that if you miss one you are sat at the stop for another 20 minutes, halfway there you must change busses to get on the one to City College.
Combine that with the fact that the buses being used for the City College route are some of the oldest, loudest, and most uncomfortable forms of transportation known to man.
Riding a camel through the Mojave desert is probably a more pleasurable experience. At least you can be sure the camel is not going to crash into anything or kill anyone on the way.
The transit center, where one would change to the City College bus, is no better: a place where a collection of some of the scariest, most disturbing people in Santa Barbara can mingle. The boards in the transit center itself don’t have the routes nor the schedules, and even if they did, the schedules are inside the building. Heaven forbid you should have to find out when a bus is running after 8 p.m. when the transit center is locked.
Yes, there have been improvements with the buses now coming to West campus, but unless you effectively live at the transit center, you will have to take more than one bus to get to school.
For students who live in Isla Vista, taking the bus is simply not an option because it is going to take them up to 2 hours just to get to class. The buses need to be more regular, there need to be more of them, and it would be nice if you didn’t feel like you were taking your life in your hands every time you got on one.
Riding a bus downtown is comparable to a ride at Magic Mountain, but thoroughly less enjoyable.
If the college wants to solve the parking problem, give the students better options to get to class. Two buses an hour to the transit center and back are not options. Let’s see some buses to and from the Eastside and Westside. How about some buses directly to Isla Vista and back? It shouldn’t be that hard.
More parking spaces would be great, but the problem can be solved immediately with better options for car-less transportation. Unless the MTD improves and the service to students is better, the Channels will be forced to keep writing articles about how bad the parking situation is.

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