Parking? Gas? Mileage? These are headaches when it comes to transit time between campuses. Plus you have to figure in the total trip time, whether or not there will be traffic, parking tickets and/or excessive parking fees. These factors are often more of a hindrance than help when it comes to arriving at class on time.

For many students, however, these factors are becoming more obsolete with the expansion of the Milwaukee County Transit System U-PASS, an unlimited pass to ride MCTS bussing anywhere in the county. This pass is made available to students of several universities and colleges throughout Milwaukee County.

The basic premises behind U-PASS are simple – to ease parking concerns by having more students ride the bus instead of bring their cars, to reduce the total amount of cars on the road (and by extension, the total amount of gasoline being consumed), and to provide students without wheels a proper and reliable means for going to and from class.

The U-PASS is not limited to simply going to and from campus, it is an unlimited riding pass for MCTS, 24/7 (or while the buses run, anyway.)

The U-PASS program is designed around and caters to the modern day student – it provides unlimited riding so that students may get from home, to classes at their college of choice, to work, to practices/rehearsals/gigs, and then back home again.

For the modern student, this is an ideal situation – free trips to essentially wherever you need to go (within a few blocks, of course.)

For students like myself, this is great – my vehicle died some time ago, and I live quite a distance from campus. The U-PASS allows me to get anywhere I need to go – campus, grocery shopping, rehearsals, and shows. Since I no longer drive, I don’t pay for gas or parking, and I no longer need to drive around for 30 minutes looking for a parking spot.

While traffic is a bear on the freeway, I continue to ride by. I do NOT miss gridlock in the morning – believe me.

The U-PASS program is selected and implemented by individual colleges, and has grown to include Milwaukee School Of Engineering, University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and Marquette University.

MATC has picked up the program in recent years, to much applause among the student population. This has allowed many more students the opportunity to pursue a degree, even without a vehicle or a gracious and neighborly friend to transport them every day.

According to Archie Graham, Director of the Office of Student Life (OSL), the program is administered by the OSL, and initiated by students. Individual colleges choose the criteria for which a U-PASS is issued. MATC will issue a U-PASS when a student is taking 6 or more credits in a semester.

This works great for the autumn and spring semesters but what about summer? Couldn’t a student, in theory, take 6 or more credits for a summer semester, thereby granting them a U-PASS?

Well, as it turns out, not quite. U-PASS has not previously been available to summer students taking 6 credits.

I found this out much to my chagrin as I applied for summer classes this past summer. I was stuck to foot the bill for bus fares. Learning this, I was not the happiest camper.

Summer classes may have been slightly different for others, but my summer classes ran 7 weeks. For each of these weeks, I had to purchase weekly bus passes – at 20 dollars a week. This total over the course of the summer ran me a total of 140 dollars – out of pocket. Seeing as I had no income at the time, I had to borrow from family and friends in order to cover the cost of commuting to and from school. I am positive that I was not alone in this regard.

According to Mr. Graham, previously U-PASS was not distributed for the summer semester. However, with the closing of the Mequon, West Allis, and Oak Creek campuses for the summer, many students found that the Downtown campus was a tad more difficult to access without a reliable form of transportation.

This dissuaded several students from enrolling in summer classes, instead opting to delay classes and enroll in an autumn or spring semester with the notion that U-PASS would be available then.

I spoke with Mr. Graham and broached the subject of future availability of a summer U-PASS. He informed me that they are in the process of negotiating a summer U-PASS for next summer, hoping to encourage more students to enroll for summer classes, and to (hopefully) get more cars off the road, and make more parking spaces available. As of this writing, this is not concrete, but is definitely something we can all look forward to should it become available.