By Carla Zanoni
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
INWOOD — It’s a tale of two straphangers.
While Inwood commuters are stuck with years of headaches caused by construction on the 1 train each weekend and snail’s pace shuttle bus service that replaces the skipped stops, the MTA is footing the bill for a special free shuttle for Columbia University students and alumni en route to football games at Baker Field, DNAinfo has learned.
The agency said it agreed to supply the University with an extra bus that runs a special loop from 211th Street and Broadway, where northbound riders are being detoured, to a custom-made stop at Broadway and 218th Street, the same street where the Ivy League’s football field is located.
The shuttle bus goes into effect every time the university has a game during the construction outages, officials said.
"We do the shuttle because it is the most efficient way to deal with the surge in ridership on game days," Deridre Parker, an MTA spokeswoman, wrote in an e-mail defending the practice.
"The University does not compensate the MTA for the service," she continued. "However, just about all the customers pay a fare on the subway before/after using the bus and are allowed a free transfer in any case."
The first two games of the Columbia football season coincided with the first two weekends of closures along the 1 line, as the MTA began their 20-month, $47 million project to reconstruct the Dyckman 1 train station and rehabilitate five elevated stations from 207th to the end of the 1 train line at 242nd Street.
Parker defended the agency’s decision to tailor-make a route and assign a special bus for the Columbia riders instead of having them ride the existing shuttle buses designed for the rest of the straphangers.
"If we put these people on the regular local buses, the buses will be crowded for a few blocks, then run half empty to/from the end of the line," she wrote in an e-mail.
But the scene at 211th Street and Broadway over the last two weekends seemed anything but empty, as massive lines of straphangers bounced from the 207th Street stop waited for shuttle buses along the 1 train line.
"The only other time I've seen crowds waiting for a bus like that was on September 11th," said Inwood resident Jon Reznick, whose parents spent 45 minutes waiting in traffic beneath the train construction last weekend.
The shuttle bus routes are also affected by MTA construction, as traffic has slowed to a crawl along Broadway because the repairs to the elevated 1 train require crews to shut down Broadway from three lanes to one lane of traffic.
Parker said the traffic congestion was unavoidable, but said the MTA requested an additional lane to remain open on Broadway this past weekend. Locals said it did not help the problem.
"Unfortunately, congestion such as this may persist in some degree through the end of the job," Parker said in an e-mail.
The Columbia shuttle bus takes off from 211th street and makes only one stop, at 218th Street, three blocks north of the normal subway and 1 train shuttle bus exit at 215th Street.
Parker said that she is unaware of any other academic institutions that have received similar shuttle service from the MTA as a result of transportation outages.
She said Fordham University has never received shuttle service to its Bronx football stadium because it is served by two train lines and Metro-North. She would not comment on how that differed from Columbia’s Baker Field, which is also served by two train lines — the A train and the 1 train — as well as Metro-North.
Columbia University officials also defended their use of the MTA shuttles, saying "the expert judgement about how to deploy shuttle bus service from 207th St. for an event involving a sizable number of additional riders was appropriately made by the MTA."
"Columbia encourages fans to use mass transit when attending games at the Baker Athletic Complex and approximately 80% of our fans take the train or the bus instead of driving," added Columbia spokeswoman Victoria Benitez, in an e-mail.
"We were concerned that with the #1 line being unavailable, many more spectators would take their cars instead of use mass transit, thereby vastly increasing local traffic and parking issues."
Benitez said the University’s Athletic Department already pays for "its own scheduled shuttle service from Morningside Heights" to Baker Field "to help manage the transit situation."
Inwood resident Reznick said he was dumbfounded why the university would qualify for special treatment from the MTA.
"I am really unsure of why the MTA would foot the bill for Columbia on shuttle buses," he said. "I'd be curious to know the details of that arrangement or how it is paid for."
The MTA is paying for the buses out of the 1 train renovation funds, Parker said.
