Unlimited Access
"A promising innovation with great potential..."
Universities
and public transit agencies have together invented an arrangement—called
Unlimited Access—that provides fare-free transit service for over 825,000
people at more than fifty colleges and universities throughout the United
States. The university typically pays the transit agency an annual lump
sum based on expected student ridership, and students simply show their
university identification to board the bus.
The Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA conducted a study of Unlimited Access programs at thirty-five universities during the 1997-1998 school year. The results of the study are reported in an article by Jeffrey Brown, Daniel Baldwin Hess and Donald Shoup in Transportation (2001. Volume 28, number 3: 233-267).
- University
officials reported that Unlimited Access reduces parking demand, increases
students’ access to the campus, helps to recruit and retain students,
and reduces the cost of attending college.
- Transit
agencies reported that Unlimited Access increases ridership, fills empty
seats, improves transit service, and reduces the operating cost per
rider.
- The
universities’ average cost for Unlimited Access was $30 per student
per year.
- Student transit ridership increased between 71 percent and 200 percent during the first year of Unlimited Access, and continued to increase between 2 percent and 10 percent per year in subsequent years.
Unlimited Access at UCLA
UCLA began its own Unlimited Access program with the Santa Monica Municipal Bus Lines, or Big Blue Bus, in the Fall 2000. The program, known as BruinGO, allows UCLA students, faculty, and staff to ride any Big Blue Bus fare-free, at any time and anywhere—not just for trips to and from campus. Brown, Hess, and Shoup published an evaluation of UCLA's BruinGO program in the Journal of Planning and Education Research, (2003, Volume 28, Number 1: 69-82).
Our evaluation of BruinGO’s first-year performance found that:
- faculty and staff who live inside the Blue Bus service area made 134 percent
more daily bus trips and 9 percent fewer drive-alone trips to campus
after BruinGO began.
- students
who live inside the Blue Bus service area made 43 percent more daily
bus trips and 33 percent fewer drive-alone trips to campus after BruinGO
began.
- more
than 1,000 solo drivers gave up their parking spaces after BruinGO
began.
- BruinGO’s benefit-cost ratio was 4 to 1.
Click here to download the Unlimited Access study.
Click here to download profiles of the surveyed programs.
UCLA Transportation Services' BruinGO page.
Click here to download the BruinGO study.
Click here to download Crain & Associates' Report of BruinGO.
Click here for links to other university transit program sites.
BruinGO Information Center at ITS
About the Authors