I wanted to give you a heads up on a project that the institute and HCA will probably be working on in the next year as it has great potential to all MIT students, especially those living off-campus. The new initiative is called the U-Pass program, which will give unlimited T rides to MIT Faculty, Staff, and Students for a cost of roughly $12/month (note: this cost is negotiable with MBTA and also may be partially subsidized by MIT, depending on the results of the project). The catch is that this will not be an optional program -- that is, everyone who is included in the U-Pass program will be *required* to opt in (and therefore pay the $12/month).
Note:
1) No decisions have been made on whether spouses/partners will be included in the program (if we decide to include spouses, we will have to think of a way to define who is a spouse and who is not (since those who live off-campus generally do not tell MIT about their spouse/partner). One way to do this, for example, would be to opt in anyone who has a spouse ID card).
2) MIT would have to require everyone to opt-in in order to get this large discount
3) No decisions have been made as to whether bus access would be included in this
To answer a couple of questions preemptively, the reason MIT is doing this is because the cost of providing parking on campus is a huge expense, so both economically and environmentally it makes sense to give people incentive to use public transit. Second, we can't make this an optional program. The only way that we can get the low rate is if everyone is required to participate.
The bottom line is that we need your input (and help for those of you who want to become involved) to implement this program in a way that would maximize its utility to the MIT community. If anyone is particularly interested in working on this project or just wants to give their input, please contact me and my co-chair, Eric Weese (weese@mit.edu or gsc-hca@mit.edu goes to both of us) and Mike Hanowsky (hanowsky@mit.edu), the chair of the Safety & Transportation subcommittee. You can also post your input on this blog.
PLEASE DO NOT SPAM THE HCA EMAIL LISTS WITH YOUR OPINIONS; THEY ARE NOT DISCUSSION FORUMS.