OU’s CART service will no longer operate its fixed-route bus system through city routes after suffering a significant decrease in use in the past year.
Kris Glenn, director of OU Parking and Transportation said the university plans to discontinue the city routes while maintaining the campus routes but hopes to have a new system in place by June 30, 2019.
“Over the past two years CART has operated a significant loss which is unsustainable especially in this current budgetary climate at OU,” Glenn said.
Glenn said a lot of limitations come with a federally funded transit system. He believes the new service changes will end up working better for students as a whole.
“OU and the city are engaged in productive dialogue to eliminate the budgetary shortfalls for this year,” Glenn said. “We want to develop a sustainable transit system that meets both the city and the university’s long-term needs. Part of that is that the university is looking at does it really need to operate public transportation for the city.”
CART fixed-route buses currently run six Norman city routes and three University of Oklahoma campus routes on weekdays and most Saturdays according to its website.
Glenn said all campus routes with CART service will remain but they will discontinue services with the city routes. He hopes another service operator will take over those city routes instead of CART supplying the service.
“The hope is it will be a seamless transition and the city and another operator would operate those routes,” Glenn said. “We are working hand in hand with the city to transition this and to be honest we do not know what it looks like yet. We are just starting conversations with the city.”
