Weird, CATA got back to me today and said the project has not been restarted, so they are also confused about why the FTA lists it as an active project. But with how the federal government is being run these days, it might just be an error on their part.
Hadn't checked out any of CATA's meetings minutes in a few months, and got some good news. Overall ridership for Fiscal Year '19 (which ends at the end of September, I think) was up 6.4%, which is the biggest leap in years and the first time since 2015 that the system has topped 11 millions riders. That's an increase of over 660,000 additional rides. This was driven by a whopping 24% increase on the MSU routes (city routes were down, a bit). Overall ridership for the first three months of FY '20 are already up nearly 4% over the same period the previous fiscal year.
I was wondering if the MSU students can ride anywhere for free on CATA or just the EL-MSU routes. I know it would never happen but it would really increase ridership and decrease our dependence on the automobile and the need for parking space if everyone could ride for free!
MSU students, faculty, and staff can ride for free on the campus routes. Many other universities offer free bus/transit rides on all the local network. I was on the MSU transportation committee and MSU did not show much interest in offering free rides or some kind of structured fee for transit rides on CATA.
I think campus routes are effectively free for anyone these days - most of the time when I board one of those buses the deposit box is
under a cover with "free rides" or something like that printed on it. It is odd that MSU doesn't provide system-wide ridership as a perk... lots of universities do, and it would be a nice recruiting tool. And you think CATA would be on the ball to get the university to buy into a program that would substantially boost ridership!
How does CATA count on-campus rides if the deposit box has a "free rides" cover? I agree that students should get use of the full network, I didn't know they were limited to on-campus routes. Though off-campus students often get bus cards from their student-housing apartment complexes as a perk.
It is mostly a leadership issue from my observations. MSU is more auto-centric than most Big Ten schools and other universities I have been at/visited. A change for higher CATA ridership would be great. My local route does not have weekend or night service.
Perhaps a good idea to increase ridership would be for businesses to give their employees bus passes as MSU and the student housing companies have for their people. I think this could work well for a lot of downtown businesses state and city offices and the big hospitals in the area. Getting people to leave their car at home and taking CATA to work would help in so many ways, from reducing pollution to fewer vehicles on the streets, that would equal less damage to the pavement, and we could build new buildings with reduced needs for parking space. If a lot more people were riding CATA they would demand better and more service.
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under a cover with "free rides" or something like that printed on it. It is odd that MSU doesn't provide system-wide ridership as a perk... lots of universities do, and it would be a nice recruiting tool. And you think CATA would be on the ball to get the university to buy into a program that would substantially boost ridership!