JackPass is about to become the next blockbuster campus-wide sustainability effort on the HSU campus. It is a proposal to provide every HSU student with an unlimited-ride bus pass for the county-wide Redwood Transit Service and the Euerka Transit Service for a modest fee. This spring, JackPass will appear as a ballot initiative in HSU's annual Associated Students election. Here's why JackPass going to be a milestone for environmental and social responsibility on-campus and in the community.

Everyone knows that transportation is expensive. Gasoline is just not getting cheaper, especially not in Humboldt County, which has the highest fuel prices in the state. Additionally, consider the cost of insurance, especially steep for the college-age set, vehicle purchase, maintenance, and then add parking, currently $225 per year for HSU students and some staff and set to rise to $315 per year in Fall 2008, and currently $108/year for faculty (see "Students Subsidize Staff Parking"), and you begin to see why transportation costs the average U.S. household $7,000 annually per vehicle (most of which leaves our local economy). Granted, a few too many $70k Lexuses probably inflate that figure beyond what the average HSU student pays to drive their curvy 70's-era Volvo or battle-scared Subaru, but the point still stands: transportation is the second greatest expense for most people in the U.S., next to housing and above food.

With transportation's high cost and simultaneous importance, offering low-cost access to buses is necessary for an equitable society. When we're talking about transportation opportunities to an educational institution, issues piggy-back: we're talking about affordable access to higher education.

Most of us understand transportation is not only economically costly, but environmentally costly as well. Here in Arcata, transportation accounts for 45% of our greenhouse gas emissions, more than any other source. You may be making a valiant attempt at leading an environmentally sustainable life — the 4 R's and all that — but if you're driving on a regular basis you've yet to reduce what is probably your most negative effect on the environment.

Here on the HSU campus, there are a whole set of circumstances that pave the way, so to speak, for a successful JackPass implementation. Parking lots are filled to maximum capacity, and with construction projects, some lots have even been closed. Meanwhile, student enrollment is slated to increase immediately and into the future. The HSU masterplan calls for campus enrollment to double to 12,000 students by 2040. Where will they park? Since there is no available land on the campus, surface lots are out, and a multi-level parking edifice is in. And that costs, oh, around $30,000 per space. That's right folks, structured parking spaces will cost more than most of the cars that will be parked in them. Cha-ching!

But with the planned growth in student population, the university doesn't have any other choice but to build more parking, right? Actually, a proven alternative is to adopt a "transportation demand management" approach. Transportation demand management, or TDM for short, is an alternative to passively responding to demand for more parking. It "is defined as strategies that provide travelers choices and foster increased efficiency of the transportation system by influencing travel behavior by: mode, time of day, frequency, trip length, cost, or route," (Journal of Public Transportation). For more information on TDM as a general concept, see the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute.

HSU's arrangement with the Arcata & Mad River Transit System to provide free bus service to the HSU community is an example of an existing highly-successful TDM program — AMRTS provides over 100,000 rides to HSU students, faculty, and staff every year. It is paid for by HSU alternative transportation funds which are generated from parking fines. Eurekans, McKinleyvillites, Trinidadians, and others are asking, "What about those of us outside Arcata?" Never fear, JackPass is here to save the day.

The JackPass story began in 2004 when Chris Rall, then wildlife graduate student and pioneering Alternative Transportation Club member (the ATC was renamed Green Wheels in Fall 2005), proposed HSU create a universal bus pass program modeled after the UPass program at University of Washington (UW). When the UPass program started in 1991, UW parking infrastructure was already filled to capacity, but even with the university growing by 19% From 1989 to 2001, parking demand has remained flat, a testament to the success of UPass.

The HSU Parking & Transportation Committee was enthusiastic about the JackPass concept, especially with the encouraging precedent set by UW and other institutions, but it took a few years of meetings, research, emails, proposal writing, and checking back with the committee to get JackPass where it is today. It goes to show that to create change, it's rarely enough to have a good idea. You'll need a bit of patience (but not too much), persuasiveness, ingenuity, and a whole lot of persistence.

In late November, President Richmond brought our arguments in support of JackPass to a meeting with Chancellor Reed in an effort to save JackPass from arriving at the same unjust fate as befell the Humboldt Energy Independence Fund in 2004: after 85% percent of the student body voted to fund student-designed renewable energy projects on the HSU campus, and President Richmond signed his approval, the CSU chancellor refused to sign-off on the program, which would have created new learning opportunities for HSU students and gradually freed for other purposes the nearly one million dollars per year HSU spends on energy bills. This time around, we are trying to get the chancellor's support even before students vote on JackPass.

HSU Parking & Commuter Services already subsidizes Redwood Transit System unlimited ride passes for students and staff. A semester's worth of passes (4 months) costs $100 with this subsidization, instead of the regular price of $200. Even with subsidization, though, the current cost for RTS bus passes if far above what commuters are willing to pay, for example, if they only use the bus occasionally. With JackPass, every student will have a universal bus pass in the form of their HSU identification card, paid for by a mandatory $15 per semester student fee. Since JackPass brings the cost of a bus pass much lower than it is currently, and since every student will get one automatically, far more students will take advantage of the county-wide buses. Even students who live in Arcata but are making trips to other places in the county will benefit. RTS buses travel to Old Town and the Bayshore Mall in Eureka; Moonstone Beach near Westhaven; and HSU's satellite facilities, the Telonicher Marine Lab in Trinidad, and the First Street Gallery in Eureka, to name a few. It's even easily possible to take your bicycle on RTS (see "Bike or Bus, Why not both?").

Even if not every student uses their JackPass, the program still deserves their support. Students and taxpayers alike pay for many services they do not use, but the resulting aggregate mix of services lifts all boats. With JackPass, pedestrians, cyclists, bus riders, and motorists alike will benefit from less air pollution and automobile congestion on campus and in Arcata; motorists will have more available places to park, and could potentially find that JackPass keeps parking fees lower if JackPass reduces the need for expensive parking structures (the HSU masterplan calls for four); and individuals as well as the whole community will benefit from a lower overall cost for transportation and a less-drained, more robust local economy as we create a healthier less-polluted planet.

The benefits of JackPass don't stop on the HSU campus, but extend out into the community. It is a solution to a classic chicken-and-the-egg problem: People say they would take public transit if there were better routes, with busses passing at more frequent intervals, and running at more hours of the day and night, but transit operators say they can't expand and improve their services without more riders and fare revenue. JackPass is a model institution-transit partnership to inject more riders and capital into the transit system in one fell swoop and achieve the kind-of "critical mass" that the transit system needs to become viable and attractive to riders.

JackPass is truly a win for our university and town, community, economy, and environment. Students of HSU: are you ready to pass the most exciting ballot initiative since the Humboldt Energy Independence Fund this spring?

See also:

Jack Pass proposal

Jack Pass FAQ