According to an email sent by an anonymous group of students, not being able to get a bus pass may be a consistent issue for some students in Buffalo State.

The email details how the previous contract between Buffalo State and the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority had ended. This has led to a temporary solution in that bus passes would be handed out to students monthly. The process of obtaining one has also moved from the library to the parking services office.

The email claims that campus leadership has lied about the passes, alleging that:

“The university has used the excuse that bus pass policies in previous years allowed for College Riders Accessing Metro (CRAM) passes that were only valid between the months of September and May. According to our research and the university’s publicly listed policies, this is a blatant lie, and several have attempted to explain this to them.”

Bus passes are covered under every student’s transportation fee, which entitles you to receive a bus pass on request. If the email, which itself does not offer any conclusive proof, is factual, this would mean that the university may be misusing the transportation fee by failing to provide bus passes for all students who request them.

Parking Services did indeed confirm that the previous CRAM Pass agreement Buffalo State had with the NFTA ended in the Summer of 2022. They reasoned that due to the lower ridership numbers, it did not make financial sense to renew the agreement for further years.

“Instead, we worked with the NFTA to find an individualized solution that met the needs of our students’ who use the Metro system and landed on provision of monthly passes”, Parking Services said in an email.

Although they also state that “this semester has also seen an unexpected 37.5% increase in demand for passes over our largest dispersal of any month last academic year. This necessitated us returning to the NFTA several times for more supply.”

Recently the NFTA has started to change over its Monthly Passes to a new format, the “MetGo” card, so students are beginning to see transit passes that look different. This coincides with Bus Drivers no longer carrying physical Day passes on board the buses.

“(Buffalo State) is not the only client that needs to obtain Monthly Passes and due to their change to the MetGo Pass, they were affected by their supply of materials,” Parking Services said.

In the end however, Parking Services states that students can be assured going forward that Buffalo State continues to provide Metro Bus and Rail access to all registered undergraduates who need it.