CyRide Solution Options

With funding diminishing and the amount of students rising, CyRide is facing many challenges. These challenges include finding ways to fund and fix the overcrowding of the system. These are a few solutions that are being considered by the Ames Transit Agency Board of Trustees.

1. Matthew Goodman, member of the Ames Transit Agency Board of Trustees and City Council at-large representative, said:

a. “You could just limit rides on peak hours and have unlimited rides on not-peak hours to kind of push people off the peaks a little bit. This is a common concept in most transit but also in a lot of utilities,” Goodman said.

b. “If we can’t figure out a way to pull back the usage, we will probably ask the student body to cover a little more to make up for all that increased usage,” Goodman said.

c. If we could figure out a way for the free rides to be treated a little bit more like they’re actually costing people money, that would probably be good enough for me,” Goodman said.

2. Zach Murrell, member of the Ames Transit Agency Board of Trustees and senior in mechanical engineering, said:

a. “It’s our responsibility to put a funding model in place to insure sustainability so that people in ten, twenty years from now can continue to get to work,” Murrell said.