Students Face Transportation Issues as Commuter Numbers Rise

The influx of commuters at UC San Diego in the 2021-22 school year, exacerbated by the recent “housing crisis,” has drawn a new light to existing transportation issues on and around campus. Last spring, UCSD’s Housing Dining Hospitality (HDH) ended the two-year housing guarantee for undergraduate students. HDH also eliminated triples for the 2021-22 school year, unlike other Southern California UCs such as UC Irvine, UCLA, and UC Santa Barbara. 

The majority of UCSD students commute to campus, now and for the foreseeable future. This is a stark contrast to the four year housing guarantees UCSD offered until 2014. The recent shift to a majority off campus student body has multiple causes: the limited on-campus housing caused by the new HDH policy combined with steadily increasing enrollment; the mandate to grow at the UC level magnified by the sharp college applications surge during the 2020-21 application season.

A key issue with off-campus housing is accessibility to campus, especially during rush hour. The major modes of transportation to campus for off-campus students are bicycles, cars, and the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) buses.

Unlike other UC campuses such as UC Davis, UC Irvine, and UC Santa Barbara, which have won the Platinum award for bicycle friendly universities consistently since the award’s conception, UCSD’s bicycle infrastructure is much less developed. UCSD claims to be working on “a more bike-friendly campus for students, faculty, and staff.”

Nicholas Brandt, a third year Environmental Chemistry major who lives off campus and often bikes to and around campus, constantly deals with UCSD’s subpar bicycle infrastructure. “It’s somewhat inconvenient to bike…[because] it’s important that bicyclists yield to pedestrians, but if they’re doing nothing but yielding to pedestrians, it takes them 20 minutes to get across campus,” Brandt said.

Both driving and commuting via MTS buses have garnered criticism from students.

Off-campus undergraduate students primarily can buy two permits. An S permit, which costs $346.50 for a quarter, only allows students to park in a limited number of spots. Although the spots that are available to S permits are generally located in central places on campus, this has led to a scarcity of available parking spots. Students with S permits often wake up at 6 or 7 a.m. to snag a spot before they’re all taken. D permits, which can be bought by both students and employees, allow parking mainly near Regents or Gliderport during peak hours. Although it is easier to find a D permit parking spot than a S permit parking spot, both the Regents and Gliderport lots are much farther away from campus than S parking lots and require further transportation.

According to UCSD Transportation Services’ official data on parking availability during Fall Quarter 2021, there are 1,229 total normal S spots available to commuters with S permits. In contrast, there are 5,022 total normal — non-carpool, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, or one hour — B spots available on campus. For A permits, there are 2,029 total normal —  non-carpool, physician, or temporary — A spots available on campus.

There are 3,019 UCSD faculty eligible to buy A permits. There are 7,045 non-academic, non-health, non-student staff — eligible for B permits — as of April 2021. After adding graduate students, who are eligible for B permits, to that number leaves a total of 14,779 people eligible to buy B permits.

According to UCSD’s common data set for the 2020-21 year, 81% of all undergraduates, or approximately 27,000 students, live off campus and commute. Looking at the percentage of parking spots relative to eligible permit holders, 67% of eligible A permit holders can get a spot, around 34% of eligible B permit holders can get a spot, and 4.5% of eligible S permit holders can get a spot on campus.

Wesley Mah, a third year Human Biology major, bought a D permit instead of an S permit due to price and parking availability. Mah commented that “the D parking spots are located at the Athena Health Center on Voigt Dr” and that “the distance from the lot to my classes is about 1.5 miles.”

Mah stated that after parking, he takes the “201 [bus route] that runs directly to Gilman transit center.”

Due to MTS discontinuing service to Regents Rd. after the Blue Line Trolley opened on November 21, the thousands of students who park in D spots at Regents Rd. will have to find a new method of getting to classes. Bus route 50 is also being discontinued, creating discontent among students, some even taking to graffiti near cancellation notices to express their discontent.

Olivier Jamois, a fifth year Linguistics major, also has a D permit and typically parks at Regents. Due to the imminent service changes to the Regents parking lot, Jamois is “going to have to walk to class. The Regents shuttle is simply too irregular, small, and has too few drop-off points to be useful…my 10 minute bus ride before is now turning into a 35 minute walk. Incredibly inconvenient.”

The Outside Loop and Inside Loop shuttles, which shuttle students around campus, were discontinued from running on weekdays in Fall Quarter 2021 due to understaffing, leaving many commuters and on-campus students to travel long distances, and furthering accessibility concerns of the disabled community at UCSD.

Although the Outside Loop has returned to service, it is currently running every 30 minutes instead of its previous frequency of every 15 minutes. Additionally, the Regents shuttle, which takes students from the Regents parking lot to campus, is currently not running due to the extension to remote learning until January 31.

Yacun Wang, a third year Probability and Statistics, and Data Science double major, has a B permit because of his two on-campus jobs, though he still has difficulty finding parking.

Wang noted that he typically arrives “around 8 a.m. to park, which is not too busy for B permits.”

Wang also commented that he once “planned to park at Osler/Gilman at 10 a.m., and it turned out there were no B spots in either parking structure,” leaving him with no choice but to go park at a farther structure. Wang stated that although B spots can be easier to find in the morning, “towards the middle of the day, convenient A and B spots start to fill out too. At this time, this is a pervasive issue and I think UCSD is not encouraging students to drive.”

The Commuter Resources page on TritonLink lists public transportation, such as MTS buses, as a main mode of transportation for students to get to and from campus. However, issues with the MTS buses, and especially the new Pronto system, have been met with frustration from students.

Ruojia Tao, a fourth year Data Science major, noted her concerns over COVID-19 safety as well as Pronto on MTS buses. According to Tao, Pronto was “not quite working at the beginning of the quarter.” Tao also said that she’d like to see more concern “about…preventing dispersion of COVID” since she feels the need to “use hand sanitizer every time [she] touches the handrails in the bus,” due to current crowding on buses.

Brandt echoed Tao’s sentiments about crowding, as he described his daily routine when he takes the bus to get to class. “I’ve shown up to the bus stop 15 minutes early, for the one before the one I need to get to campus on time, and I’d still be waiting there because it’s full, or delayed,” Brandt stated.

With the opening of the Blue Line trolley, the impact of the bus route changes due to the trolley could provide new opportunities for students to get to campus on time, but potential disruptions to students’ commutes due to new bus times might exacerbate current commuters’ worries.

Commuter students have already expressed concerns on Reddit about convenient bus stops being removed, leaving students with no options except taking the bus from UTC to UCSD. Although currently UCSD’s Return to Learn policy has been unclear about when exactly a full return to in-person learning will happen, when mandatory in-person learning returns, it will bring more students on campus, further complicating commuter transportation.

“The massive increase in commuters isn’t adding to a problem, it’s bringing attention to a problem that was always there,” Brandt said.

Angela Shu is a Staff Writer for The Triton.