Purdue agrees to subsidize CityBus rides off-campus, as free rides disappear
University and CityBus arrive at one-year deal, after bus company balks at continuing free rides off campus for students, staff, faculty for coming school year.
Purdue will put $74 toward $99 semester passes students, faculty and staff buy from CityBus for off-campus rides, as part of a one-year contract Purdue trustees approved Friday.
The move won’t replace the free, off-campus rides for anyone with a Purdue ID that had been built into agreements between the university and CityBus for campus loop routes for the past two decades.
But it comes on the heels of an announcement in April by CityBus that it would no longer provide free off-campus rides, which Purdue officials said had come as a late-semester surprise but that CityBus leaders had said was a necessarily budget move they’d been signaling to the campus for the past year.
“We're happy to provide this service for students who need it and happy to reduce their cost from what it would have been in the spring,” Jessica Robertson, Purdue’s associate vice president for auxiliary services, said Friday. “Our team has worked really, really hard to get to this point.”
Purdue agreed to set aside $2.39 million for CityBus, which will include a contract for the Silver, Black and Gold loops that cover points on campus.
Robertson said that amount will include $725,000 to cover the university-subsidized semester passes for off-campus CityBus rides. According to the university’s arrangement, Purdue will pay CityBus $99 per off-campus semester pass purchased up to 7% of the enrollment for fall 2024 and spring 2025 semesters. That would be more than 3,600 passes, based on last fall’s enrollment of 52,000-plus students. Robertson said that cap was built into negotiations that were still being finalized between the university and public bus company.
The semester passes for students, staff and faculty will be available on CityBus’ mobile ticketing app, Token Transit. How Purdue will reimburse its share of those $99 semester passes was still being worked out.
“I was pleased to learn that Purdue will be reimbursing affiliated riders for a portion of the cost of their semester passes,” Bryan Smith, CityBus CEO, said in a release Friday after the trustees’ vote. “CityBus highly values our decadeslong partnership with Purdue University and is proud to continue operating campus loop routes bringing invaluable mobility options to the Purdue community.”
Some of the comments among trustees were a bit icy Friday, recalling the abrupt announcement by CityBus in April that things would change for the fall semester.
“The negotiation has been contentious because of the approach CityBus chose to do,” Gary Lehman, a trustee, said. “This got a lot of attention because they provide service for the entire county, and we are probably 50% of their business. So their livelihood depends upon the relationship with Purdue. … They haven't had a price increase for their non-Purdue riders for 20 years. Now they're hitting us with big ones. I think they're really wise to get the one year contract. Let it be known, that just gives us one year to be able to really sit and look at our options.”
CityBus’ rationale in April, though, contemplated increases coming soon, possible in the next 12 to 18 months, across routes that cover parts of Lafayette and West Lafayette.
At the time, Smith said he wasn’t sure whether he could tell non-Purdue riders that their fares were going up without having a similar conversation with the university.
Smith said CityBus was facing what he called a financial cliff. He said a combination of factors – ranging from stagnant state funding that hasn’t kept up with inflation over the past 12 years, property tax circuit breakers cutting into revenues and bus fares that haven’t increased from $1 a ride and 50 cents for seniors and those with disabilities for 20 years – leave projections that CityBus’ expense will outpace revenues and reserves by $2.8 million by 2026.
Smith said in the spring that Purdue’s campus loop contract at some point included a provision to offer free rides off campus – a provision that became an expectation.
According to CityBus numbers, the campus loops at Purdue accounted for 800,000 passenger in 2023. Purdue student and staff riders accounted for 2.2 million of the 4.4 million passengers CityBus had off the West Lafayette campus in the past year.
Robertson said Purdue had wanted better ridership data for the negotiations over the summer. She said the new university-subsidized passes will include some way to track how passes are being used and how many rides are being taken.
“I don't know what it will look like a year from now,” Robertson said. “We're going to work with CityBus about what's the true demand, what our students really need, what our faculty and staff need. The data is going to get stronger and better, and the data is going to help tell that story.”
Bryan Walck, CityBus manager of customer experience, said the company didn’t know Purdue had settled of the subsidized pass model for off-campus rides until they saw the trustees vote Friday.
Walck said the two sides still had details to work out. He said he wouldn’t characterize the negotiations as contentious, though he allowed that they were challenging.
“What has changed, from my perspective, is Purdue has signaled loud and clear that they are committed to affordable transportation for their folks, and they’re willing to, through whatever mechanism, reimburse riders for a large portion of the cost of the pass,” Walck said.
Brantly McCord, a doctoral student at Purdue, has been helping organize a town forum Saturday on the Purdue/CityBus situation, through the group Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing. McCord said Friday that the rides still won’t be free, “which is a step back from what Purdue riders used to have.”
“While the cost of housing, parking and food remain financially burdensome for Purdue students, staff and faculty — especially for those who are disabled or struck with higher charges due to out-of-state or international status — having to pay for an essential service like transit is a crushing letdown,” McCord said. “Understanding that fiscal cliffs for public transportation services are far from unusual, and certainly not unpredictable, GROW will begin petitioning for completely free transit at the Town Hall for Transit (Saturday) evening.”
Walck said CityBus will continue to run Route 23/The Connector, a free service that covers Purdue’s campus and downtown Lafayette.
Purdue’s action Friday also will include an incentive with a free pass for students living in University Residences apartments that are consider campus housing but are located off-campus.
On a related note, coming Saturday: Graduate Rights and Our Wellbeing, a group based at Purdue, will host a town hall at 5:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 3, to discuss the stakes in ongoing negotiations between the university and CityBus over the cost of bus rides. The GROW forum will be at the West Lafayette Public Library, 208 W. Columbia St. The forum also will be available on Zoom by going to https://www.tinyurl.com/townhallfortransit.
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