By Alexander Mousa, Editor-In-Chief
Post recently announced that the university would be partnering with the Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE) bus service to provide transportation for students from campus to locations across the north shore.
The news was shared to students via an email from the university sent out on Thursday, Aug. 31. The partnership between Post and NICE is centered around the N20h line of the bus service, which has stops near the front entrance of campus by the library. The line connects the Hicksville train station with the Great Neck train station, connecting Post to over two dozen stops along Route 107 and Northern Blvd.
Chief of Student Experience and Special Projects Joseph Vernace spoke about the new partnership.
“This bus line not only goes to stops southbound, but also westbound to the Great Neck railroad station, Wheatley Plaza, the Americana shopping mall… A lot of different spots to really help students who either are local or are not familiar with the area to get a feel of what the Old Brookville township is like, and to give a traditional college feel,” Vernace said.
The NICE bus partnership with LIU will be replacing the shuttle service that previously connected Post directly to the Hicksville train station through a private third-party bus service.
Dean of Students & Chief Diversity Officer Ashley John spoke about some of the perks of having the public transportation service instead of the private buses.
“It’s also convenient in the sense that when the university wasn’t open, we wouldn’t have our shuttle, so this also gives more access to students if it’s a holiday or one of the breaks, so that’s another important perk too,” John said. “We are also able to track the buses, whereas we used to have to call up the bus company if the bus was running late to find out where they were.”
The N20h bus has been stopping at Post for years now, but this new partnership is providing 20 free one way rides for all students. After these 20 rides, students will have to pay the normal bus fare of $2.90. Student fare information, however, is available on nicebus.com.
“The great thing that we were able to do this year was to sponsor the first 20 rides for the entire academic year for students. All students can claim up to 20 free one-way fares using the NICE GoMobile app and by signing on with their MyLIU email address. Once they do that, those 20 tickets will be auto-loaded into their NICE GoMobile account. It will take about 24 hours after making the account for the tickets to be loaded,” Vernace said.
As many students already know, the N20h stops by the library on University Dr., and so does the on-campus shuttle service. This will allow students to access both buses from one stop and transfer directly between the two. The on-campus shuttle will be servicing students beginning at 7:30 a.m. each day at stops around the campus.
One of the differences that students will likely note is the fare. The old off-campus shuttle through the third-party service was free for students, while the NICE buses will cost students money after the free 20 rides.
Vernace spoke about this extra cost for students using the bus.
“The cost of everything, as you know because of this post-pandemic world that we are in, has skyrocketed astronomically. It used to be that the shuttle service would cost about $150,000 per year, and all of that was funded by university fees, which a select portion of is allocated for student life activities. After the pandemic, and with rising costs for gas and diesel, that contract that we had last year skyrocketed, it more than doubled, and so having an off campus shuttle service for that much money of the entire student activity fee was limiting the amount of service that we’re able to provide for all students,” Vernace added.
Vernace says that the school analyzed and studied how many students were using the off campus shuttle service, and that it turned out to be a small number for a university with thousands of students.
“When we looked at the data of who was actually using the off-campus shuttle services last year, it was a very small, niche number of students. It was always busiest during the first two weeks of the semester…but then after the second week or so, we were seeing an average of 100 users per week. To have more than half of the student life fund as a shuttle service for a very small group of students, we also have to think about the entire university and how we can benefit all students,” Vernace said.
With money freed up in the student life budget, the university says that they will be providing other services to students to make the campus life more enjoyable.
“[We will have] two new fitness centers on campus. We are opening the Blue Fit Strength Center and the Blue Fit Cardio Center, both in the Pratt Recreation Center, so we were able to do some construction in those spaces and make more opportunities for campus recreation. You are going to be seeing a lot more of the types and size of programs that we were doing pre-COVID because of this savings. We will be bringing back a spring concert this year, so all the things that weren’t possible because of the cost increases for the off-campus shuttle, we are excited to provide other services for students through Student Affairs and maximizing student activity fees,” Vernace said.
Post feels that this new partnership replacing the old bus service will allow for a more enjoyable student experience on campus this year.
The N20h line will be running every 30 minutes on weekdays, and will run other times on weekends and nights. For more information on the schedule of the bus service, visit nicebus.com.
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