On Jan. 10, Off Campus College Transport (OCCT) announced that the DCR bus route would revert back to the DCL route for the spring semester, after being changed last fall. The route will travel through Binghamton’s West Side by way of Leroy Street, rather than Riverside Drive.
The original change of the DCL to the DCR took place at the beginning of the fall semester due to concerns voiced by Binghamton residents, who felt that buses were creating safety concerns while traveling through suburban neighborhoods, and that this traffic should be restricted to main roads rather than residential neighborhoods. Because of these issues, the city of Binghamton asked OCCT to stop sending buses down the street, and the route was changed to follow Riverside Drive.
While the old DCL route traveled all the way down Leroy Street, the new route travels down Riverside Drive, and uses Beethoven Street to get to Leroy Street for the remainder of Binghamton’s West Side. This will allow for the route to avoid some of the areas residents complained about, while also passing through areas with heavy student populations.
Timothy Redband, director of OCCT, said that changes were made in coordination with the city of Binghamton to improve the safety of the DCL route, including new street signs and planning of future traffic changes.
“We worked directly with the city to make changes at the intersection of Leroy and Beethoven Street,” Redband said. “We added ‘no parking’ signs, stop signs and we will be pushing back the stop line in the future, so that buses stop farther from the intersection.”
Students like Lakshmi Hareendran, a junior majoring in integrative neuroscience, said they were happy the route had changed back to Leroy Street.
“I like the DCL route,” Hareendran said. “It comes right by my house. I think the change is a good thing for everybody who lives on the West Side.”
Anna Riviera, a junior majoring in history, said that the DCL route was also more convenient for her than the DCR route, but that she could empathize with those living farther away from Leroy Street.
“I can see why it would irritate people who live on Riverside, but there is more student access on Leroy, so it will benefit students living there,” Riviera said.
Other students like Ambar Modi, a graduate student studying computer science, said that he could see both positive and negative aspects of the DCL route. But overall, he said felt the change would work well for him.
“The DCL is a very good route because it covers more people than the DCR, but the DCR route had less traffic,” Modi said.
Redband said that he thought that students would react positively to the reinstatement of the DCL route, especially given the frustration that many students expressed when the route was originally changed to travel down Riverside Drive.
“The DCL route is closer to where most students live on the West Side,” Redband said. “This should mean that students have easier access to the bus stops and a safer walk home at night.”