CityBus won't be reimbursed for majority of Purdue off-campus passes

Three days before the semester began, Purdue signed a new contract with CityBus, agreeing to reimburse the company for a set amount of semester-long bus passes redeemed by Purdue students, faculty and staff.

But two days into the start of the semester, the number of redeemed passes exceeded the upper limit of the contract, said manager of customer relations Bryan Walck, leaving the company without revenue for the rest of the passes released to Purdue affiliates.

The most notable difference in the 2023-24 contract and the new 2024-25 contract is the language about off-campus routes.

CityBus announced in April it would no longer offer free off-campus rides for Purdue affiliates, and the community quickly took to social media to express complaints, according to previous Exponent reporting. The company would instead offer semester-long passes for $99.

Purdue Board of Trustees then voted on Aug. 2 to subsidize the passes, agreeing to pay $74 of each one.

A new contract was finalized a couple weeks later, and Purdue announced by email it would cover the full amount of semester passes, rather than the previously approved $74 subsidy.

Contract changes

The earlier contract, signed on Aug. 29 last year, was amended with several changes, including omitting a sentence in the introductory section that said “access to the off-campus fixed routes.”

The new version, titled “Statement of Work #2 Between Greater Lafayette Public Transportation Corporation and Purdue University,” had no specific mention of off-campus routes, but an amendment to Statement of Work #2 filed the same day detailed the terms in which Purdue would pay GLPTC to reimburse the semester passes.

Section 8, titled “Off-campus routes,” said anyone registering with a purdue.edu email will have no charge for off-campus service.

“Purdue agrees to reimburse GLPTC $99 per off-campus semester pass up to 7% of enrollment per semester,” the contract said.

Walck said the tally of redeemed passes for Purdue affiliates was up to 16,930 as of Wednesday afternoon, about 4.6 times the amount the university agreed to reimburse CityBus for.

“There’s a spike on Aug. 17, which was when they had BGR,” Walck said. “Then it stays high the next few days.”

Another spike in the data occurs on Aug. 20, which was the second day of classes for the fall semester.

“Purdue sent out an email to everybody and there was like 3000 passes that one day,” Walck said.

He expects another steep increase in people signing up for the off-campus pass when the weather officially gets colder for the season.

“That first really cold day when you walk out of your dorm and you can feel the ground crunching under you and you can see your breath,” Walck said. “As an operator, that's the first really busy morning.”

Though the number of passes has already greatly exceeded the cap Purdue is reimbursing CityBus for, any new passes redeemed by Purdue affiliates this winter will remain free to riders.

“CityBus is not receiving any revenue from the university for that asset in excess of the 7% and riders are receiving them at no charge,” Walck said.

The current average number of passes redeemed per day has fallen to double digits, Walck said, but is remaining stable there.

“I think what that illustrates is ... students use transit. They value transit,” Walck said.

“When they were presented with, ‘This is the method to get access to transit,’ they took it. They signed up,” he said. “Seeing those big spikes, to me, means there’s tremendous value for the service.”