York County is an expansive and beautiful community with so much to offer to students; wonderful public parks, a vibrant and artistic downtown, friendly small business, and so much more! The Rabbit Transit public transportation system is used by many native Yorkers and provides reliable and safe transportation to all corners of our community.

At YCP, public transportation is limited to on-campus shuttle buses and first Friday shuttles. While these are certainly helpful for exploring the campus itself, they don’t offer students safe everyday access to the greater community.

According to Niche, 73% of students live on-campus. Not all of these students have cars on-campus, and this can put a burden on low-income students who may not have the same resources to explore York. Plus, the rail trail to downtown is not particularly safe especially in the evening. Parking can also be an added safety issue for those with cars. Furthermore, according to APTA, public transportation is 10x safer per mile than traveling by personal car.

I would like to reach out to Student Senate and the YCP administration and ask them to reach out to Rabbit Transit to put stops on and around campus. Furthermore, like schools such as Pitt, the nominal cost of public transportation can be added onto tuition so that students can use their YCP Flex cards to quickly board buses for free. Or, YCP could sell extremely discounted bus passes that students could optionally purchase!

Regular fares for Rabbit Transit are $1 for regular and $0.50 for half fares. If a student rides the bus 5 days a week, away and back to campus, for 9 months (a rough estimation for a semester), that’s $360 tacked onto their total tuition. Not every student will use the transits 5 days a week, so this fee may actually end up being cheaper. Also, this is assuming students would pay full fares, but talks with Rabbit Transit might be able to give students a deal to further reduce the fee!

Also, public transportation offers an incentive for students to not bring cars to campus. Public transportation is more environmentally friendly, and this can also free up valuable commuter parking.

Ultimately, there are so many pros to offering public transportation to students and this could be a great, safe, cheap way for students to explore and connect to the wonderful york community.