BYU-I students call for public transportation
A group of BYU-Idaho Students is pushing for more public transportation in Rexburg, holding a rally just off campus Tuesday afternoon.
The group “Students for Students” held its rally with two goals in mind: collect signatures for a petition and gain more exposure.
Co-Founder Audra Schwartz said public transportation would solve several problems.
“With more and more students comes more traffic,” said Schwartz. “I feel like it’s a good way to solve that problem people have.”
Go-Founder Kyle Wagner said the need and want is there, he just think students need an avenue to show it.
“Mainly through student polling we found that fifty percent of students are pro-public transit,” said Wagner. “They wish that there was a more viable public transit option here in Rexburg.”
Wagner said students are forced to walk hours on end just to get to stores like Walmart. He also said traffic and parking can get far too congested around campus.
“Most of the people that go to school here still don’t have cars,” said Wagner. “A lot do, as you can see there’s cars everywhere and the community complains enough about them you’d think they’d have the propel to do something about it.”
The group got a surprise visit from Rexburg city councilwoman Donna Benfield. She heard about the rally and wanted to learn more.
“I believe I have the same interests that they do at heard,” said Benfield. “We need to be able to move these students around.”
Benfield, who’s also the CEO of the Rexburg Chamber of Commerce, said public transportation could really help the economy.
“It would be able to move some of these students who are living on the west side of town into the community, into some of the retail stores,” said Benfield.
In the meantime, a feasibility study is underway in Rexburg to find out if a public transportation system would be successful. The study was funded by a federal grant.
“The worst thing you would want to do is to create one that wasn’t needed yet and have it fail,” said Benfield “I’m not all for getting it, unless the time is right.”
Benfield said the university will be involved, and she’s hoping 2,000-3,000 students will be surveyed. The results are supposed to be ready by September.
