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Off-Campus Graduate Student GO-Pass Program Renewed for 2006!
The GO Pass is valid for unlimited travel on Caltrain for all of the 2006 calendar year and it only costs you $60.Passes are available for pick-up at the P&TS office starting 7:30 am Friday, January 20th.
The GSC Parking and Transportation Advocacy Committee, Parking and Transportation Services, and the Office of the Provost have reached an agreement to temporarily extend the popular pilot GO-Pass program for off-campus grad students. Started last year as a pilot, the program expired at the end of 2005 for want of a sustainable funding source. The University has agreed to pick up most of the cost of the program for 2006, on the condition that a measure be placed on April's special fees election ballot to fund the program in the future. In addition, students who pick up the 2006 pass will pay $60 towards its cost. This agreement represents a major victory for the GO-Pass program, which had been strongly building momentum during the nine-month pilot, and for the hundreds of graduate students who have discovered the joy of public transportation through the program.
This major win is only the beginning, however. The program extension was approved for only one more year. After this, it will only continue if graduate students agree to a Special Fees increase in the election this April.
Background Information
Here is some background information on the GoPass program kindly provided by Brodie Hamilton, Director, Parking & Transportation Services:
The GO Pass program was established at Stanford University with the specific intent of using it as a TDM (transportation demand management) tool to help meet a specific General Use Permit (GUP) condition. Stanford began providing the passes to eligible faculty and staff three years ago to help comply with the GUP condition that "no net new peak hour trips" be generated by the university. The GUP is the Santa Clara County approved growth plan for the university that identifies over 100 conditions with which the university must comply in order to add 2 million square feet of academic space (over the next 10-20 years). The consequences of not meeting the "no net new trips" condition are considerable. The university would be required to contribute many millions of dollars to numerous intersection improvements in the area.
Traffic is monitored by traffic counts (cordon counts) that take place in the spring and fall of each year. Vehicle count hoses are placed at 16 entrances to the campus to count the number of vehicles entering and exiting the campus during the peak commute times. University faculty and staff were chosen as the eligible commuter group for the GO Pass because of their large numbers, generation of the large majority of vehicle trips crossing the cordon points during the peak hour commute periods, and highest drive alone rate. The GO Pass program for faculty and staff is paid for by funds dedicated to covering costs associated with complying with GUP conditions.
In March of 2005, Caltrain administration agreed to open their GO Pass program to students through a pilot project with Stanford graduate students (the program was previously only available to career employees at participating organizations). The university, using non-GUP funding provided by the university administration, established a nine-month pilot project to fund GO Passes for graduate students living off campus. This pilot project, established in coordination with the Graduate Student Council, was intended to provide an opportunity for grad students to experience the pass program and provide the students time to work on establishing future funding opportunities (through a referendum to tax themselves for pass expenses, establishing a subsidy program, etc.) if they felt the program was of value to the grad students. This pilot project concludes at the end of this calendar year, and no funds have been identified to continue the pilot.
As with many transit pass programs, the Caltrain GO Pass is offered at a relatively low rate (compared to paying the full fare for daily use) because the program administrator (Caltrain) assumes that a large number of the individuals eligible for the pass will either not use it, or use it very infrequently. That is why an employer, like Stanford, is required to purchase passes for all individuals in an eligible category in order to get the relatively low rate per pass. So, with the grad student pilot program, we were required to purchase passes for all 3,200 students that live off campus. Under the Caltrain program, we would not be allowed to purchase GO Passes for only those students that would use it regularly. At $100 per pass per year, Caltrain would lose money big time.
It would be nice to provide a GO Pass to everyone wanting one. However, this would be a very expensive proposition and funding is limited. The trip reduction impact and contribution toward achieving the GUP condition would be relatively small if we provided passes to some or all of the groups not now eligible for the passes because of the small number of trips generated during the peak commute time by members of these groups (temporary university employees, employees that live on campus, SLAC and Stanford Hospital employees, and other categories of students are not eligible for the GO Pass).
Get involved: help keep the GO Pass!
It will take a lot of effort to get the GO-Pass Special Fee on the ballot and passed, but we know we can count on all of ou who are most impacted by this for your help.Please watch the grad-commute listserve for an announcement on the start of our Special Fees campaign and ways that all of you(and we mean *all* of yhou) can help ensure that this excellent program continues well into the future.
To subscribe to the list, send an e-mail to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu with "subscribe grad-commute" in the message body.
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