A commuting fortune

It is certainly refreshing to hear that ASPSU President Rudy Soto has been working this year to bring down the price of the FlexPass for PSU students. With his plan, he told the Vanguard last week, the pass could be lowered to anywhere between $50 to over $100 (its current cost is $150 per quarter). Awesome. What’s not as awesome is the brouhaha happening as a result. Oh, bureaucracy.

The FlexPass offers all-zone coverage for roughly three months. Currently, at $50 a month, this is just under two-thirds the cost of buying three $76-monthly passes directly from TriMet. While it’s great that PSU students get this at all, across the way at the University of Portland students can obtain a monthly pass for $41, and both Reed and Lewis & Clark students can purchase one for $38. Down at the University of Oregon, students, faculty and staff alike can use their school ID cards as a pass to ride free anywhere on the bus system that serves the Eugene-Springfield area.

Meanwhile, Portland State, Oregon’s largest, most urban and commuter-driven university, has one of the lowest subsidizations of transit passes. I think it’s safe to say that PSU students make more use of public transit to get to and from school than most other institutions in the state. How wonderful that we’re paying more than anybody else, too.

Right now the money that subsidizes FlexPass comes from two different price reductions: A discount from TriMet on the sale of passes to the PSU Transportation Office, and a discount from the Transportation Office on the sale of passes to the students. ASPSU has consistently been in touch with City Commissioner Sam Adams’ office to talk about potential ways to lower costs, but Jane Ames, Adams’ senior policy director, has admitted that progress has been delayed due to her office being busy with other projects.

An internal solution of Soto’s, which is currently being proposed, is to further lower the FlexPass cost through an infusion of existing student fee money. And this is where some fuss is coming in. SFC Chair Amanda Newberg told the Vanguard last week that Soto cannot get the funds now, as the idea was not brought up when ASPSU first submitted its budget for next year. SFC guidelines don’t allow for Soto to appeal the budget or to add proposals. Soto has tried to have an exception made for the FlexPass issue, which has been denied by the SFC.

Next, he’ll be giving his proposal to the student senate, which, while not having the authority to amend the SFC budget, can make strong suggestions to change the budget. Soto said if the senate agrees with his proposal, the SFC budget could have complications. “This could potentially be a standoff,” he said. Hoo boy.

Newberg claimed that to allow Soto his request for student fees would mean special treatment. “Process-wise, it would be treating ASPSU different than any other group,” Newberg said. Maybe so, but it would also mean giving a break to the 3,000-plus students who bought FlexPasses this quarter, and the many more who would buy a FlexPass if it were made more affordable.

Subsidizing mass transit is no small feat when it’s for thousands of students in a major metropolitan area spanning over five hundred square miles. But, that’s exactly why a more affordable FlexPass is so important to our school’s vitality. PSU’s status as an urban commuter school allows many of its students to obtain higher education where they might otherwise not have been able. Portland State is a boon to the city for the opportunity it provides, and a cheap FlexPass should be part of that.

While ASPSU deserves some scrutiny for why the fee request wasn’t in their budget in the first place; the senate, the SFC and Soto need to work together to find a cheap FlexPass for PSU. Priority should go to funding a project like the FlexPass that has the potential to provide financial relief for students en masse.

That’s not special treatment for ASPSU, that’s deserved treatment for the student body.