Pilot CU 'Campus-to-Campus' bus service will be available this fall

This fall, a pilot "Campus-to-Campus" bus service will be available to all members of the Cornell community and those providing services to the university. This new service will operate full-sized, coach-style buses on an express charter service between Cornell's Ithaca campus and both the Cornell Club and Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

President Jeffrey Lehman has made enhancing the connections and collaborations between Cornell's Ithaca and New York City campuses a university priority. In late 2003, he asked the university's Office of Transportation and Mail Services to do market research on the development of regularly scheduled ground transportation between Ithaca and New York City. The findings indicated that such a service would fill an unmet need for Cornell commuters and help improve access and interdisciplinary collaboration between the two campuses.

"This bus service will provide a vital connection between Weill Cornell Medical College and the Ithaca campus," said Lisa Staiano-Coico, dean of Cornell's College of Human Ecology. "It's a convenient travel option for Cornell faculty, staff and students and will undoubtedly support our goal of increasing research and educational linkages between the campuses." Staiano-Coico also is the director of the Tri-Institutional Research Program, an alliance encompassing Cornell's Ithaca campus and Medical College, Rockefeller University and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

The buses, operated by a regional provider of high-end transportation, will have business-class accommodations and hold approximately 20 passengers. The coaches will feature wide, reclining seats with footrests, generous legroom, wide aisles, worktables, task lighting, power outlets, a galley and lavatory facilities. And the Ithaca-New York travel time of between four and four and a half hours is comparable to total travel time for air passengers. The pilot service will be available during the fall semester, from Sept. 7 to Dec. 17.

"This service will be of significant value to faculty, staff and students at the Johnson School," said Dick Shafer, associate dean for corporate relations at Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management. "As a professional school, we are constantly traveling to New York to visit the many alumni and corporate recruiters in the metropolitan area, as well as to stay in touch with other Cornell colleagues in the New York area. Metro New York is one of the primary markets for the school, and the new bus service will provide a cost-efficient way to better stay connected. I particularly like the fact that the service will be set up for working efficiently while traveling, a major advantage over other travel options."

The service, while helping to accommodate campus-to-campus commuters at Cornell, is not seen as being in competition for customers with Tompkins County Airport, which continues to service the majority of commuters in and out of Ithaca. According to Anne Keefer, manager of the Cornell University Travel Office, "the maximum potential impact on local air travel is minimal." Currently only 850 of 65,000 annual boardings at the Tompkins County Airport are Cornell travelers, booked through the Cornell Travel Office, with a final destination of New York City. "While the bus service might tempt some of these flyers," Keefer added, "it will have no effect at all upon the vast numbers of travelers making flight connections in the New York regional airports and to other USAirways destinations."

"Cornell continues to be highly committed to helping our local airport thrive," said Richard McDaniel, Cornell associate vice president for campus and business services. "My role as a member of the Tompkins County Airport Taskforce is to ensure that we do all we can to help the airport support the local community, including the business and university sectors."

The Cornell coach service's eight trips a week, at the business class rate of $149 per round trip, also would not offer much direct competition to regional bus service to New York City, which provides daily trips between Ithaca and New York City, in standard coaches, for under $80 round trip (and less than $60 for students).

The Campus-to-Campus coach service will open up appealing choices to those who have been unable to make the New York City trip due to time or financial constraints. It also will serve to decrease the number of Cornell fleet and personal cars making the trip, producing economic and environmental benefits.

"This service fulfills a unique niche in travel needs for Cornell community members," said William Wendt, director of Transportation Services. Wendt, who also is responsible for the university's fleet operations, explained: "It will be less expensive for the university to send people down by the busload, allowing them to arrive relaxed, without the hassle and expense of finding parking. This will also free up our fleet vehicles for other types of trips.

"This type of service," Wendt added, "has precedents at other major universities that are distant from regional urban centers. Logistically and academically, this is even more important when -- as with Cornell -- the university has major teaching, service and research facilities located there."

For further information on the pilot service, contact Transportation Services at 255-4628; to make reservations, call the Travel Office at 255-4284 or visit this Web site: http://www.cbs.cornell.edu/travel/c_to_c.html.