VTA commute to De Anza needs improvement

As you may have seen since your first day at De Anza College, almost half of the campus is devoted to either parking lots or parking structures. Driving to and from school or being stuck in traffic takes a lot of time for a majority of students.

Then how about public transportation? Eight VTA buses go from or through De Anza, giving you access downtown to San Jose, Sunnyvale, Saratoga and Mountain View. But do they really work efficiently and fulfill the need of students?

“I think the number of bus stops should be reduced. It is a waste of time when the bus stops every minute,” said Magdalena Dziarska, 25, business programming major. “Sometimes I need to take three buses to get to somewhere in 90 minutes that, for a car, would take only 15 minutes.”

In addition to the long commute hours to school, the arrival times of the buses are equally problematic. While the buses are generally on time during non-rush hours, their arrival times during rush hours typically fluctuate 10 minutes above or below the schedule usually because of incidents on the roads.

Many other cities have many apps that allow commuters to track the arrival time of each bus in real time, despite the occasional inaccuracy. To address this issue, the VTA should develop an app, like Google maps, that shows every route and estimated times of arrival, enabling students to plan their schedule.

We are not doing enough to promote bus transportation as an alternative to driving. DASB generously grants money from EcoFund to fund our Clipper cards, so more should be done to make the buses more reliable.

In fact, many people are discourage from taking night classes because many buses either stop running at around 8 p.m. or the number of available buses is reduced to every hour or more. This is especially difficult for people who may have work and family obligations to fulfill after school.

Suleima Ochoa, 20, political science major, is an intern in the student group TRANSITion, which advocates for equitable transportation via public advocacy and commitment to social justice.

“For the majority of the students that we speak to, most coming from South and East San Jose, it takes them an unreasonable amount of time to get to school,” she said. “This leads to a chain reaction of other problems and issues.”

Certainly more can be done to make buses a more feasible alternative. Our students deserve to worry less about their everyday commute and be able to focus more on schoolwork