NFTA Offers Discounted Metro Passes For UB Students and Staff

Yes and the funding to extend the rail to north campus will come from the UBnevernever project.

It's a start. Considering that many international students live out near the north campus, this is no help. Really, it serves a very small number of students who might live within half a mile (or less) of a rail station. The only large population of students that meet that criteria live in University Heights. For them, it's a one-stop (Lasalle to University) ride. Woo hoo.

This makes sense... So much sense that it should have been done 20 years ago... However the fact that it is going to be done now that is good!

Makes scense, since many of it's students come from NYC where taking the train is part of their norm. Unlike our locals who still feel it's beneath them to take public transportation. We need to change that perception.

NORTH CAMPUS

The NFTA is as stubborn as they come when making big changes to how it currently operates (outer harbor, updating vehicles,etc).
Unless there are some big financial incentives from making any changes, they'll drag their feet as long as possible. However, this might be the one of those incentives to finally expand the line. This will, no doubt, bring a boost in ridership and demand should go up for an expansion. I only hope NFTA realizes it sooner or later because gas prices are going back up as we speak and they will miss out on a big opportunity.

I am really surprised this isn't offered to all students or even mandatory. I go to a medium sized school in another Great Lakes city, and part of our student fees include a $25 semester charge for a student mass transit pass. It's a win-win situation in that the transit authority is guaranteed a decent source of revenue, and encourages students to ride public transit even when they're done with school or out of session. Not everyone uses it, of course, but it makes it so much easier to access what the city has to offer when everyone you know can take the bus or train.

A commendable first step but it still leaves thousands of students and faculty in the region stranded because none of these options allow them to use the extensive bus network. The NFTA just started a whole new route that connects North Campus to the boulevard mall, Amherst, Tonawanda and Buffalo. It also has a simpler faster route to get from South Campus to the airport or mall, very important for all those out of town students. Unfortunately students and faculty cannot take advantage of these new better changes through this agreement. I do hope it is successful and a first step to something larger, but anyone who lives away from the subway will still have to purchase a monthly pass of their own to get to UB via transit. If they really wanted to get people out of their cars, and move towards climate neutrality, they should have made the pilot program available for the whole system. A transit network works because it is a network, a sum of many interdependent parts. Access to one line of the whole, while nice and useful for some, isn't going to bring about any shift in behavior because students need and want to get to NFB, the mall, elmwood, and the airport, none of which this helps with. But it does start the discussions again, which is a good thing overall.

This is redundancy at its best. It solves no transportation issues for UB students. The passes will only be available to 3000 south campus and university area residents. So that still leaves the thousands that live on north campus to pay full price. Not only that, everyone with a UB ID has access to the blue line which runs twice an hour from south campus to downtown for free. Why pay for something that is already included in tuition? Canisius and Buffalo State students both have unlimited access to discounted passes. It seems strange to me that the largest amount of students in the most concentrated area are neglegted. I suppose it's a "first step to something larger" but I refuse to applaud either the NFTA or UB till they come up with a solution that actually changes anything.

this is an awesome idea, how much you want to bet that most of the ub kids will end up moving in and around bufflo. they dont have cars especially the Chinese kids so this will help bring more business in. kudo to nfta

I'd love to see turnstiles put in all stations. The 'Self Service' idea is a joke.

I would like to see the NFTA lines extended to be more useful, maybe like Toronto where they have the subway, GO trains, and VIA Rail (their Amtrak) all meet inside 1 station...