Why is BYU so anti-transit? I find it incredible that in this day and age the school would actually make the UTA move the very convenient Wilkinson bus stop several long blocks away to a well-hidden area, where a disembarking passenger might have a hard time even figuring out where the campus is! This is very disrespectful to the students and others who are doing the right thing by not adding to the pollution and noise caused by so many cars. Furthermore, it is particularly demeaning in inclement weather and possibly unsafe at certain hours.
In addition, because the main road through BYU has been closed, the northern bus stops are ridiculously far away. What’s worse, at the one near the Marriott Center, even though it’s right across the street from the venue, there is no crosswalk to traverse the very busy and dangerous University Parkway. Bus passengers must endure the indignity of walking a long way to the corner to finally be able to cross and then having to walk most of the way back on the other side!
A university with more than 30,000 students should not be making the choice to use transit so unappealing and inconvenient. Having 99 percent of people driving to campus is an extravagant and wasteful use of resources and requires a tremendous amount of valuable land for transportation and storage. I’d be very curious to know what the rationale is for this very backward, not to mention isolationist, thinking.
James Maertin
New York City, New York