A Lesson in Sustainability

It’s hard to miss the rumble of the Oxford University Transit buses as they travel through the Ole Miss campus. As the bus makes its frequent stops on campus to pick up and drop off students, it’s easy to see public transportation is a growing trend with Ole Miss students.

“They’re pretty timely on their schedules and they pretty much go anywhere around town. They pick me up and drop me off wherever I need,” says student and frequent rider NAME.

As more and more students catch on to the public transportation trend, there is an opportunity to promote O.U.T. even more by educating both students and community members about the benefits of public transportation. After O.U.T. added four new routes last November, the options for riding the bus have increased drastically. With the addition of these new routes and buses, most people agree more advertising is needed to attract riders.

“It’d make it a lot easier to have a good idea of where all the locations that they’re stopping by,” says student Brandon Sherwood when asked about better advertising. “It’d just make it a lot easier to have a consistent schedule you can follow.”

Educating students on the benefits of public transportation is essential to the growth of O.U.T. By attracting more student riders, there is the possibility of drastically easing the traffic that clogs the Ole Miss campus each day.

“By keeping it free for students we are maintaining a positive relationship between O.U.T. and the campus,” says Anne McCauley, a Project Coordinator for the Office of Sustainability.

But McCauley agrees more than a free ride is needed to attract student riders. “I think the more information students have the easier it is to ride.” She says the Office of Sustainability is working with O.U.T. to create a map with individual stops so students can better visualize where the bus runs.

But students are not the only ones who need more information on public transportation in Oxford. On campus students continuously hear about the Green Initiative, Rebel Pedals, and other groups dedicated to campus sustainability. What is needed next is a way to educate Oxford residents on the benefits of a sustainable town.

Since most people who live in Oxford own their own vehicles, many residents don’t see a personal need for public transportation in their own lives. It’s not that they don’t support O.U.T., they just haven’t been taught the benefits of public transportation.

“We do have people that depend on the bus to get from one location to the other,” says O.U.T. manager Ron Biggs.

Biggs points out that although most riders are students, faculty and staff, it’s important to remember that people in the community need the bus just as much as students.

As the focus shifts to attracting more student riders, O.U.T. must remember their riders from the community who have no other method of transportation except for the bus. By educating those Oxford residents who own a vehicle and have never ridden the bus, there is an opportunity to widen the circle of support for this growing transit system.

“I think the people who do ride it in the community really rely on it…There are a lot of wealthy people in Oxford, but there are a lot of poor people too. And those people really rely on the bus,” says Taylor McGraw, an Oxford native and chair of the Associated Student Body Affairs Committee.

O.U.T. benefits many people in this town, and educating all Oxford residents on the benefits that come from supporting this transit system will encourage the system to grow. O.U.T. is still in its growing phase, and they need all the support they can get.

Knowledge helps encourage people or groups to support something they may have known nothing about before. By educating students and community members on the impact a public transportation system can have in people’s lives, this budding transit system has the opportunity to flourish and set themselves in the ranks of a large-city transit system. A lesson in sustainability not only impacts a single person, it can impact an entire town.