Typical reasons to ride CyRide: It’s convenient, it’s fast, it’s more environmentally conscientious than driving, and it’s warmer than walking.

But not for the next few months.

Starting this week, a portion of Osborn Drive will be closed to expand steam tunnels and chilled water pipes leading to the new chemistry building, according to Mark Stevenson, construction project manager with Facilities Planning and Management. This will make Osborn inaccessible to the seven routes that travel it, including the main hub of the CyRide world, the Kildee-Bessey transfer point.

Now all affected CyRide routes will go down Pammel Drive until at least Nov. 21, weather permitting. But weather in Iowa is never permitting, and construction, like the mess on 4th Street, always seems to take longer than it should.

We’re going to be stuck with this for who knows how long.

At first glance, it looks like the Osborn closing will just mean a few extra minutes of walking for most bus riders. Certainly, that’s annoying, and will progressively be more so as winter sets in.

However, the new replacement for the Kildee-Bessey transfer point — the stop where just about everybody gets off the bus — is right next to the Stange Road-Pammel Drive intersection. Anyone who’s crossed that street can tell you that everyone at that intersection is in a big hurry. There’s no cross walk very close to the transfer point, so getting across the road is like a jaywalking game of dodgeball … with cars, particularly since drivers aren’t expecting swarms of people to be on Pammel. Someone is going to get hurt out there.

And Pammel was already a busy road. A few years ago, former student Robert John Stupka III was hit by a charter bus — not a CyRide bus — and killed as he crossed Pammel. With seven bus routes and scores of riders added to the heavy traffic, the road will be even more dangerous.

CyRide director Sheri Kyras says CyRide knows the road is “very congested” and the bussing system is trying to make it as safe as possible by talking to their drivers. But they need to somehow inform the large portion of the population that doesn’t ride CyRide about the sudden influx of travelers on Pammel, particularly right at its intersection with Stange.

Pammel Drive got a major makeover of its own this summer. Stevenson says the plan was to get both roads redone before school started, but they “just couldn’t make it happen.” But getting Osborn done before 27,000 students came back to campus should have been priority.

Since that’s not the way it worked out, maybe the university should consider opening the barricaded part of Stange between Kildee and Lagomarcino Halls. It would relieve traffic flow at the intersection or, at the very least, could provide a safer stop for the transfer point.

This situation also puts a hole in CyRide’s green initiative. Efforts like bike racks on the front of buses are a good step toward going green. But Osborn’s closing could be a bigger step backward. Potentially, fewer people will ride the bus and decide to drive to campus instead, when the weather gets bad. We can have some nippy days in mid- to late-October. Barb Neal, operations supervisor at CyRide, says they are concerned that fewer people will ride. CyRide will no longer get as many people quite as close to their destinations, and there is no longer a shelter to shield away the wind. Not to mention the new system is a little confusing. If given the choice, many people may choose to drive or walk.

So reasons to take CyRide this fall? Well, at least it’s still a good time to call your mom.

— Bailey Lewis is a senior in English from Indianola