Beauty does little to diminish the chasm that exists between two hilltops; the view from one to the other can be lovely, even spectacular, but traversing that space can still be difficult from the steepness of the grade or from obstacles on the path.  So it is in Tallahassee, Florida, where on one peak of College Ave sits the 19^th century central business district, considerably updated with the state capitol building, several gleaming condo towers, and, apropos to this narrative, city hall.   As might be expected, at the other end of a street named College is the Westcott Building with its namesake fountain and gate that mark the most photogenic entrance to the Florida State University.

Just down the hill from city hall are law firms, marketing agencies, and apartments, the predictable attachments to a

. . . resembling a post-apocalyptic yard sale.

downtown. The approach up the other hill to FSU is similarly complemented with the offices and housing that tend to cluster around institutions of higher learning.  In the hollow between them the spirit of Animal House was in full flourish.  A series of old fraternity houses were the shame of both the city and the university:  garbage covered the yards and overflowed from trash cans and recycle bins, sand carried by rain covered the city’s sidewalks and sewer drains, and empty gravel lots advertised parking spaces for lease.  Two of the mansions had burned and much of the charred contents had migrated outside, resembling a post-apocalyptic yard sale.

Rarely does the physical geography of a place provide a more perfect metaphor for current events than Tallahassee’s two best known hills did in early 2005.  In good times the two peaks can be said to overlook one another; that spring they were glowering.  In addition to the regular friction that exists between town and gown (traffic mitigation, problems with alcohol) the city and university were at odds over a zoning change that would allow a private developer to build condominiums on land bordering the campus that the university wanted for itself; lawsuits were threatened and editorials were written.  Far more ominous for the City of Tallahassee was the headline in the Tallahassee Democrat that read, “FSU wants more from Bus Service,” followed by, “Tallahassee’s mass-transit system had better shape up—or its No. 1 customer might ship out.”

The university was seriously considering ditching its $900,000 annual contract with Taltran to start its own transit agency.  University officials generally considered the campus service, known as Seminole Express, to be unreliable and, in the words of one vice president, “not really conducive to student use.”   So when, in April, Ron Garrison arrived for his first day of work as the executive director for Taltran, he had a visitor waiting for him:  FSU Associate Vice President for Administration Paul Strouts wanted to tell him in person that the university would not renew its contract with the city.  Starting a university transit system would have cost FSU millions of dollars and Taltran—a department of the City of Tallahassee—nearly 40% of its ridership, clearly not a winning proposition for either institution.

Officials at Florida State knew they wanted something different from Taltran but they did not know what that was.  For decades the dominant trend at the university was growth:  growth in enrollment, growth in building construction, and growth in the number of parking spaces.  The lone exception to the pattern of expansion was housing; not one bed was added from 1985 to 2005 and beginning in the late 1990s the university began a campus-wide dormitory renovation program, including razing and reconstructing DeGraff Hall, thereby decreasing the number of available on-campus beds by several hundred at any given time.

The predictable result of a net decrease in on-campus housing was the externalizing of housing on the community; student apartment complexes sprouted around Tallahassee like azaleas in the spring, the size of each increasing in direct proportion to the distance from campus.  Students relied more and more on cars to get to class so that by the 2006-2007 school year there were four parking garages on campus with a fifth on the way, for a total of 39.44 parking spaces per acre, the highest parking density of the eleven state universities (the next highest was Florida International in Miami with only 31.98).  But with such a small campus, the university could not meet demand:  there were still only 0.34 spaces per student, the third lowest ratio in Florida.

The city’s transit agency had also gone through some changes.  By February of 2007 the agency was completing a massive overhaul that included changing its name to StarMetro, repainting all the old buses and buying new ones, and adopting a new advanced farebox system.  In addition to the executive director, the planning administrator and the rest of the planning staff were all new to the agency.  There were then 11 buses providing service to Florida State and those buses circling the campus accounted for 25% of StarMetro’s entire annual ridership (an additional 15% coming from the U-pass program that allowed students to use city routes to get to the edge of campus).  The new planning staff observed that in the fall of 2006 only 7% of the student body lived on campus, meaning that those packed campus buses were mostly moving student drivers from parking lots and garages to class.  Planners also noticed that there were distinct pockets of student housing within a few miles of the campus.  FSU had publicly acknowledged that even with the recent opening of the fourth parking garage and the construction of the fifth about to begin that there would forever be a net decrease in the number of parking spaces each year.  On the heavily congested streets surrounding the university the planning division saw an opening for increasing transit ridership and for improving relations with StarMetro’s biggest customer.

Staff requested and received student address data from the university and geocoded it in GIS.  The results were as dramatic as they were expected.  Map 1 shows the FSU campus and student population densities nicely concentrated on roads leading to campus.  Nothing about this was surprising, but it was important to have data visibly supporting basic assumptions about student housing patterns.  The goal was then to take the existing resources of the on-campus routes (11 buses) and use them to bring students to campus with high frequencies without compromising student mobility on-campus; signs around campus had for years promised students a bus every 10 minutes, even if the narrow, well-traveled streets prevented this frequency from actually occurring.

StarMetro devised a plan that would extend service to pockets of dense student housing and then circle the campus in what are effectively figure-8 patterns that bring students from home to class in a one-seat ride, but that still provide frequent on-campus circulation.   After a formal presentation FSU administrators enthusiastically approved the final plan as seen on map 2.  The route design brings transit to within a quarter of a mile of 53% of registered FSU students.  As seen on the map, Tomahawk, Heritage Grove, and Gold each has two buses on 40-minute routes, and Garnet has three buses on an hour route so that each route has a 20-minute headway for passengers.  These routes are scheduled with the arrival times printed on signs at each bus stop.  The routes are staggered so that they enter the campus ten minutes apart and going in opposite directions so that there are ten-minute headways on campus in either direction.  To aid internal circulation there is also the Renegade route which maintains the familiar circular pattern of the old routes when all eleven buses followed roughly the same configuration.

For all its flaws the original Seminole Express had the great advantage of being incredibly simple to understand and use: the buses moved in circles and had no scheduling.  It had also been in use for more than a generation and there is always a risk in taking something that is entrenched and broadly understood—even useful for those who insist on driving to campus—and replacing it with a service that is more complicated, unfamiliar, and requires a major shift in behavior (switching from driving to transit).  These concerns were voiced during public meetings and some student senators insisted the new service would fail for these very reasons.  This student input would prove invaluable in the marketing of the service.

The main problem that had existed between the two institutions was a total lack of communication; the only significant contact officials had with one another was during contract negotiations when the two met like the Soviet and American delegations at a prisoner exchange.  The relationship had been completely adversarial.  No more.  FSU and StarMetro developed and split the cost on a number of marketing initiatives to inform students of the change.   The joint implementation team met regularly, even breaking bread on occasion.  The group designed and printed new Seminole Express stop signs that include a complete system map and a schedule sign for each of the 70 stops.  They developed a brochure describing the new routes and distributed 40,000 of them to every apartment complex near the routes; all of the apartment companies agreed to include the brochure in their student welcome packets.  FSU Transportation Services, rechristened from Parking and Transportation services to deemphasize student driving, agreed to hand students a copy of the brochure when they paid parking tickets.  Carol O’Domski, the new head of Transportation Services, hired temporary staff to act as transit ambassadors who would answer questions and offer guidance to students for the first hectic weeks of class and she requested FSU Police to direct traffic at key locations around campus to ensure the buses could get through and keep on schedule during the first week of the semester.

The university also agreed to include transit on the official campus map for the first time ever and this image was used to create a new Z-card map.  Z-card is a handy map that easily folds to the size of a credit card, or more importantly, to the size of an FSU ID card.  The map has a pocket that can hold the ID and Suntrust Bank, the vendor for on-campus banking, agreed to help sponsor the printing.  Now when students get a new ID, they get it in a Z-card instead of a plastic sleeve so that a transit map is always in their pockets.

The most readily apparent results of the program have been on the transportation network.  Ms. O’Domski estimates that there are between 400 and 700 fewer cars on campus each day and StarMetro reports a 35% increase in Seminole Express ridership.  This can only be expected to grow.  “The student population is dynamic,” says StarMetro Planning Administrator Brad Sheffield.  “We won’t see the true effect of the change for a few years yet.  This year 75% of the students remember Seminole Express as it was.  Next year that will be 50%.  And when this year’s freshmen graduate, no one will remember the old way, and that means that transit will become just the normal way of getting to school.”

Less obvious is the change in relations between town and gown.  StarMetro has a five-year contract with FSU to provide services, up from the one-year contracts that were previously the norm.  Florida State has invested in the new service and believes in it and StarMetro has a product that the staff is proud to offer.  Most importantly, both parties now view themselves as partners and enjoy an open, two-way communication.  “I have StarMetro in my speed dial,” says Ms. O’Domski and, says Mr. Sheffield, StarMetro is always happy to get her call.

This article first appeared in the Fall 2008 Universities issue of Trip Planner Magazine.