New route

UTRGV Parking and Transportation Services will begin utilizing a new and independent shuttle bus that will transport students to Weslaco from Brownsville and Edinburg, effective today. 

“If you’re a student living in, say, Alamo or Mercedes and you need to get to Edinburg, why would you drive all the way to Edinburg, go through the traffic, congestion, delays, when you can just go to Weslaco, take a bus and go there without worry,” said Gabriel Zuñiga, director of Transportation Services.

The Robert C. Vackar College of Business & Entrepreneurship requested the new bus route to better accommodate students taking upper-level courses in the Center for Innovation and Commercialization in Weslaco.

In an interview with The Rider, Jorge Gonzalez, associate professor of management and acting program director for the College of Business and Entrepreneurship doctoral program, said the Center for Innovation and Commercialization in Weslaco will house the college’s program, which will have about 70 students.

The center, located at 322 S. Missouri Ave., is near Weslaco City Hall, which is the pickup and dropoff site for the new shuttle stop.

“This shuttle is going to allow [UTRGV campus community members] to [move] around the Valley,” Gonzalez said. “Some of them do not have cars, or they might choose to just take the shuttle.”

Although nursing junior Anays Duque will not use the new shuttle stop herself, she is excited to learn about the addition.

“I’m really glad they added this shuttle bus because it gives back and I think it is going to benefit the students,” Duque said.

Zuñiga said the new route can benefit not only the students from the School of Business and Entrepreneurship, but also those in the mid-Valley.

“Once people get wind of this route, that it goes from Weslaco to Edinburg and back, as well as to Brownsville to Weslaco and back, people in the mid-Valley area that have to go to those campuses might use that facility to drive there, park there and then get to their campus,” he said.

The addition of the shuttle stop will not lengthen the Campus Connector route as it is an independent shuttle.

Each shuttle will be labeled accordingly to help students identify their designated shuttle.

The estimated cost of the new route is about $191,000 for both semesters. Because of the partnership between UTRGV and Valley Metro, Parking and Transportation will seek a 50 percent reimbursement for operations.

However, the reimbursement is not guaranteed.

The College of Business and Entrepreneurship is paying the full amount, according to Zuñiga.

As far as other changes, UTRGV Parking and Transportation is slowly revamping its transportation system.

Bus shelters have been added, bus pullouts have been created and planning has been done to create big canopies at all three main campuses.

As of now, the department is focused on university grounds; however, it is working on expanding its services in late 2019 or early 2020, to further accommodate the UTRGV community and general public who lack regular transportation.

“Eventually, we will have to branch out to areas that are not UTRGV, [such as] shopping centers, grocery stores, theaters, things like that,” Zuñiga said.

Seventeen transportation vehicles will be in service and available to run throughout the year.

Each Campus Connector will be equipped with Wi-Fi. Last spring, UTRGV Parking and Transportation Services updated the routers on the bus to connect up to 60 people simultaneously.

For Fiscal Year 2018, the Vaquero Express ridership was 197,025 and is expected to increase across the board. 

“We’re adding a lot of different benefits,” Zuñiga said. “We just overhauled all of our brochures, and I also apologize, we have not uploaded them to our website, but if you go to our Twitter account, all of them are listed there, including the 2018 fall and 2019 spring times.”

For more information on shuttle times, routes and availability, visit UTRGV Parking and Transportation Services’ Twitter page @UTRGV_PTS.