Uny Chan came to OU from Hong Kong with many assets: command of four languages, visits to more than 30 countries and a business plan to start an airline.
One thing he didn’t come with, however, was a car.
“It’s extremely inconvenient from a foreigner’s point of view to live here without a car and without having a drivers license,” said Chan, a University College freshman.
Chan said he is reliant on OU’s CART (Cleveland Area Rapid Transit) system, or the kindness of friends with cars, to get him places unreachable on the heel-toe express.
One problem with CART, Chan said, is the loop system its buses use. So, despite CART’s stops at several places on or near campus, and one at 12th Avenue NE and Main Street, across the street from Norman’s eastside Wal-Mart, a CART trip there and back can take much longer than it does by car.
Currently, most CART buses start their routes at one point and return to the same point, with no vehicle running the opposite route. This means although two CART stops might be geographically close to one another, a rider would need to ride the entire route to move between the stops.
“It takes 10 minutes for me to go from the university to the Wal-Mart,” Chan said. “And, to come back, it takes 45 minutes.”
However, CART would like to eliminate that problem as part of its long-range plan to improve public transportation offerings on campus and throughout Cleveland County, Kris Glenn, spokesman for CART, stated in an e-mail.
“The plan is a blueprint for the future of public transportation in Norman that would enhance the CART system by ... transitioning from the current loop system to efficient, frequent linear routes,” he said.
Chan said he understood why Norman didn’t have as well-developed a public transportation system as his native Hong Kong does, given Norman’s relatively low population density (144 people per square kilometer, according to the US Census Bureau) when compared to Hong Kong (6,460 per square kilometer, according to the country’s Web site).
“In Hong Kong, we have an excellent transportation system,” he said. “The city is so crowded, there’s not enough land and we do understand we cannot afford to have private cars. At least not everyone can afford to have private cars, for the sake of the environment, or for the sake of urban planning.”
Another campus group is also working to help students, international students in particular, with their weekly runs to Wal-Mart.
The group, comprised of 8-12 OU students with cars, meets up with international students every Monday at 8 p.m. at Kraettli and Traditions East apartments and drives them to and from Wal-Mart, Gib Park, one of the drivers, stated in an e-mail.
“A lot of those students come here, they’re dropped off on campus and they have no idea of where anything is,” said Ashley McDaniel, special education senior and one of the drivers.
McDaniel said the group takes between 70-100 international students every week. The drivers are either OU students or area volunteers, Park said.
The trips take about 1 1/2-2 hours, McDaniel said.
For more information about volunteering to drive, or if you are an international student needing a ride to Wal-Mart, contact McDaniel at aem73086@yahoo.com.
The Oklahoma Daily is pleased to provide you the opportunity to share your thoughts about this article. We encourage lively debate on the issues of the day, but we ask you refrain from using profanity or other offensive speech, engaging in personal attacks or name-calling, posting advertising, or straying from the topic at hand. To comment, you must be a registered user of OUDaily.com. Thanks for taking the time to offer your thoughts.
You must be logged in to leave a comment. Log in | Register
mart9256 2 years, 5 months ago
Let me start off by saying that I know the International students (being one myself) highly value the support the volunteers group rides to Walmart. I do not own a car myself, and quickly discovered this inconvenience also. Three days after arriving in Norman from London, having no contacts with a car at this point, I chose to avoid the seemingly endless wait and journey on the CART Bus from Traditions and took to running the 2.5 mile route to Walmart on 12th Ave, intent on purchasing a bike. My run, which was far quicker, was made more hasty by the inclement weather Norman has to offer as thunderstorms raged to the North (I was seconds from being drenched when I arrived.)
The problem of commuting in Norman without a car is demonstrated by the lack of safe routes for biking. At home the highway code states a £500 ($823) will be issued to bikers who ride the pavement (sidewalk) in urban communities. Here, despite the ample availability of bike racks, and the helpful officer from OUPD advising me to register my bike, I quickly discovered that motorists have little tolerance for cyclists sharing the road. And yet the sidewalk is dangerously narrow to share with pedestrians. Before Norman planning officers start renovating the CART route, perhaps it should consider the safety of other road users.