The public City of Moscow bus service, SMART Transit, has made a permanent change to its West Route through the University of Idaho campus. This change started out as a temporary detour last semester due to the construction closure of Sixth and Line streets, but after the detour received positive feedback from UI students and community members, SMART administrators adopted the new route into the daily bus schedule.
SMART transit has officially added an hourly stop outside the Idaho Student Union Building (ISUB) on campus — the bus arrives 11 minutes after the top of every hour Daniel Gray, SMART Transit Executive Director, said.
Now there are four bus stops located on the UI campus, not including the Moscow Intermodal Transit Center on Railroad Street, where all bus routes depart and end.
Two SMART Transit West Route stops are located on Sixth Street— one is outside the Living Learning Community Dormitories (LLC) and the other is outside Wallace Residence Center.
Gray said the previous West Route stops on campus received criticism due to limited accessibility.
“It’s often been brought up, generally anecdotally, that SMART hasn’t found
a way to provide transit access to the interior of campus,” Gray said. “Now we have plenty of stops on the campus, but there was this perception we hadn’t been accessing anything uphill.”
With the added ISUB stop, the West Route — which stops on campus every 30 minutes — runs on an alternating system, switching between the ISUB stop and Sixth Street stop.
Curt Vail, SMART Transit bus driver, said he believes ridership of the bus service may be up since the ISUB stop was created.
“I drove the West Route the other day and there were at least two separate times where I dropped at least 15 people off up at the ISUB,” Vail said. “The students really seem to like that trip going up through campus.”
The West Route includes stops at WinCo, Walmart, Baker Street and Friendship Square in Moscow.
The free bus service operates Monday through Friday from 6:40 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. and Saturday from 8:10 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Ellen Dennis can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @ellenldennis