Even though the trolley won't be back next year, students will still be riding the Loop with Ball State University picking up the tab.
Ball State administrators, Student Government Association representatives and MITS officials decided Thursday to continue the off-campus route next year. The Loop will run the same eight weeks after Winter Break that it ran this year, but Ball State will pay for university buses to run the route.
After seeing numbers averaging almost 44 riders an hour and topping out at 66 riders per hour, President Jo Ann Gora said the Loop was something the students supported and would be a good service to provide. SGA President Asher Lisec, who attended the meeting, also supported continuing the Loop.
"I was shocked because I honestly did not think the university would take the step to expand their transportation system from a parking shuttle to a transportation system," Lisec said.
When the Loop experiment ran this year, MITS covered the $12,000 cost of the route. To continue the Loop, MITS asked Ball State to cover half of the expenses.
"If we were going to have to pay for it, it makes better sense for us to pay for it ourselves so we can control the cost," said Tom Morrison, associate vice president of human resources and state relations. "We wouldn't be paying for MITS' overhead, we would be paying for our own."
The plan still needs to be worked out, but he said it would cost the university about the same or slightly less than the total amount MITS paid to run the route. Ball State typically runs additional busing during the winter months, and he said a bus could be used for the Loop.
Morrison said MITS made it clear it could not afford to run the Loop alone. The company receives financial assistance from the state according to the number of riders, but there is no guarantee the additional Loop riders would earn MITS more state funding.
Even though the university's job is education, this is a service that students have shown support for by riding, and he said the university needed to provide it.
"I would maintain we are not in the transportation business, but if we didn't do it no one would do it," Morrison said.
The future of the Loop was tentative all semester, but SGA supported it from the beginning and advertised it.
"I was glad to see the university providing needs for students, instead of a private company because the university wasn't willing," Lisec said.
This is the first time university transportation has expanded off-campus. Part of the reason the route will continue is because of the large student population near the Loop route, Morrison said. However, it is something that all students will use and benefit from, he said.
"It's a very good day for students, and from the students' perspective they just wanted the Loop," Morrison said. "They didn't care if the bus was white or blue."
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