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Volume 38, No. 12 |
Iowa offers deals on wheels
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| UI employee
Jan Frerichs, uses a discounted bus pass to get to work in this file
photo. Iowa City resident Frerichs is the operations coordinator of
pathology in the hematology and chemistry laboratories at UIHC. Photo
by Rex Bavousett. |
University of Iowa faculty and staff can get an Iowa City bus pass for $10 a month. (Currently, Coralville Transit does not participate in the bus pass program.) The passes, which have been offered since November 2000, are available to permanent employees who don’t have a parking permit.
"Although we say it’s an annual pass," says Michelle Ribble, the University’s commuter transportation coordinator, "users aren’t committed to 12 months."
If an employee wants to walk to work from April to October, or is off campus during the winter months, all they have to do is call the Parking and Transportation Office to cancel or reactivate the pass.
Passes paid for through payroll deduction may be even cheaper than $10 a month, since they’re payroll deducted on a pretax basis.
The $10 passes came into existence as a result of the review of parking services last fall. The goal in offering the deeply discounted passes, says Ribble, is to free up parking spaces on campus. (University employees with parking permits are eligible for a $23 bus pass.)
Currently, 480 University employees have purchased bus passes through Parking and Transportation: All but 12 of them are the $10 passes.
For more information, or to sign up for a pass, call the Parking and Transportation Office at (33)5-1475.
Article
by Linzee Kull McCray