NYPIRG Starts Bee-line Petition as County Looks to Cut the Purchase Bus Stop
- 16 hours ago
- 2 min read
By Shaya Silberstein
New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG) has started a petition to stop Westchester County from cutting the Bee-line bus stop on campus, which makes stops at Broadview and the West 2 lot by the Performing Arts Center (PAC).
“The Bee-line work started last semester when I first got on campus,” says Matthew Paolucci, the project coordinator for NYPIRG, “and many students complained about the deteriorating quality of transportation services on campus. Present in those conversations were about the Loop. I looked at alternatives to relieve a burden on that service.”
Paolucci and Purchase NYPIRG began reviewing the Westchester County routes it serves for the campus and the improvements it could make. NYPIRG found that the most recent plan from the county, issued a year and a half ago, calls for completely cutting the route.
Upon finding this information, NYPIRG immediately launched a campaign to keep the Bee-line, circulating a petition to the campus community. “We draw attention on campus and the wider community,” says Paolucci, “and we apply pressure on the county to reverse course on the route.”
“It took a minute to get off the ground,” says Nikko Gambino, a political science sophomore and the straphangers intern for NYPIRG. “But at this point, we’ve been successful with our petition. We have over 400 signatures, and just passed our resolution in our student senate to gain their support on the petition.”
NYPIRG met with the student senate to get their support for the petition, which was voted on unanimously in support of the campaign to preserve the Bee-line.
“This resolution, there’s no direct action tied to it,” says Nellie Duggan-Haas, a visual arts senior and the president of the PSGA, about the resolution. “The PSGA is saying that we support this, and not eliminating the Bee-line, as is currently planned by the county.”
Duggan-Haas has worked with Paolucci to look for other avenues for the future.
“At some point, we would increase the Bee-line service and cut the Loop, while finding out some sort of deal with the county. That's not an immediate thing. Now we just want to make sure they don’t cut the service, because a lot of people rely on it. Part of the reason ridership has been lower is because it’s advertised poorly, and a lot of students don't know that it’s an option available for them. That is something we need to improve.”
The petition will be delivered to Westchester County Executive Ken Jenkins, the Westchester County Department of Transportation, and Westchester County Board legislators. “We are planning for that petition to be delivered by the last week of April or the first week of May,” says Paolucci.