UPDATE: GUTS Buses Reroute

If you haven't been following up on the GUTS bus debacle...

The facts are: there are some members of the ANC/Georgetown community who are unhappy with the GUTS buses running on Reservoir because, they claim, that the buses cause the old roads to shake and thus cause the locks (the barrels in them) to shake and that their doors don't properly lock.

Our very own Mike Durante lives on Reservoir and agrees that while the roads do shake, that the problems aren't as serious as some members claim that they are, and that the other vehicles which travel on this public road also contribute to this problem.

As a result, the university has been "testing" a new route, as shown in the picture above, from the Voice. (Click it to enlarge... the new route is about 4.7 miles, increased from the current route about 2.1 miles.)

Obviously, besides inconveniencing the hundreds of workers who depend on the GUTS bus to get to/from work, it will increase mileage and, you guessed it, contribute more to carbon emissions.

This has resulted in a lot of name-calling/mudslinging on both sides of the conflict. So what can we do to stop this?

Here's what one poster, Tom Veil, said:

As an alum, let me give you 3 pieces of advice on how to fight the ANC’s anti-GUTS nuttiness:

1. Run as many candidates for ANC2E as you can. I know they’ve gerrymandered it so that Campus coincides with seat 4. (See http://www.anc2e.com/anc2emap.html) But if you get off-campus students to run for seats 1, 2, 3, and 5, you may lose the vote, but you will force the “town” candidates to moderate their anti-student bias in order to fend off the challenge.

2. Get the Student Association to talk to your City Councilman, Jack Evans, about getting a DC Circulator to replace the DuPont shuttle. If the bus made a couple stops on Q St, soon the locals would start using it for their work commutes, and they’d end up being the bus’s strongest supporters.

3. Don’t be afraid to talk to regular University employees, especially hospital staff. For these guys, travelling to & from campus is not an option — it’s how they get to work every day. The University tends to forget that most of its employees are ordinary folks who can’t afford to drive a car to work every day, but when the employees remind them, the University tends to snap to its senses REALLY fast.

There are two recent posts from the Voice blog for more information, here and here.

So... is anyone registered in DC?