Every time you push through a subway turnstile, you can practically hear the click of $2.90 being whisked out of your bank account or MetroCard balance. But it doesn’t have to be this way — many colleges and universities in major cities across the country partner with local public transit systems to offer their students free or reduced fares. In a city with one of the largest subway systems in the world, it’s surprising that NYU hasn’t already done the same.
Public transportation is an essential part of life for the vast majority of New Yorkers, NYU students included, with 94% of students regularly using some form of mass transit and 41% of them being subway riders. Many universities already provide free or significantly discounted public transit fares: Philadelphia’s local transit agency offers a program called University Pass, where schools including the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University put a portion of their tuition intake towards free and discounted subway, bus and train fares for students. Similar programs are used by dozens of universities in Boston, Washington, D.C. and Chicago.
In any city where the cost of living is exorbitantly high, nothing is really free. So what would be the actual cost of such a program for NYU students? The university already includes an estimated transportation cost of $2,366 per academic year in its indirect expenses of attendance — this figure encompasses both “the cost of transportation equaling one round-trip travel home during the academic year” and “local transportation within New York City.”
If NYU began providing students with reduced or free subway fares, this number would be unlikely to increase. Instead, the cost of the included fares would be included in students’ official tuition bill in a discounted, wholesale form, rather than being an estimate for them to pay outside of tuition. For example, at George Washington University, students pay a mandatory $100 transportation fee per semester, granting them unlimited access to Washington, D.C.’s public buses and subways.
Other universities’ programs, however, are completely optional. If a student knows that they won’t use public transit frequently enough to pay for a transportation fee in their tuition, they can opt out of the plan and simply pay for the subway on a case-by-case basis — an easy option that bolsters freedom of choice and convenient commutes. Commuter students at NYU would benefit greatly from a program like this: The university’s already high cost of attendance would be slightly eased if paying for transportation to and from class every day wasn’t a worry for the many students who live outside of the NYU area.
Although NYU students have access to some of the most culturally diverse places in the world, Greenwich Village can often feel like an isolated bubble. Increased access to a massive subway and bus network would open up countless more opportunities for students to explore the city beyond lower Manhattan — traveling to other neighborhoods and boroughs is essential to experiencing what it means to live in and experience New York.
Cheaper transit not only opens up the entirety of New York City to all students, but also creates another accessible way to travel within NYU’s large geographic span. While the university has a free shuttle system across its buildings, those buses still have to contend with the constant gridlock that is inevitable when driving in Manhattan. The shuttles also run much less frequently than public transportation, with buses departing at roughly half-hour increments compared to subway cars, which arrive in a matter of minutes.
Tens of thousands of NYU students already make up some of the almost 4 million people who ride the subway every day, moving from classes to campus sites to cultural institutions and back to their dorms and apartments. For a city and university that are both notoriously expensive, it would be a relief for students to not have to worry about public transit’s constantly increasing price tag. If New York City truly is our campus, getting around should have as few barriers as possible.
WSN’s Opinion section strives to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented in the Opinion section are solely the views of the writer.
Contact Sam Bergheiser at [email protected].
