By Mariah Schlossmann, For The Miami Student
New ASG bills pave the way for transportation
During their weekly meeting Tuesday, the Associated Student Government (ASG) elected to pass two new bills: the Miami University Crosswalk Resolution and the Bus Schedule Bill.
The Crosswalk Resolution had been discussed in other meetings prior to this week's, where it was presented in its original state as the Cyclist Safety Bill. After the bill was passed, it became a resolution that went to the Student Senate for approval.
"There are many issues concerning pedestrians and bicyclists who consider one another to be a nuisance," Katherine Caprez, off-campus Senator and author of the bill, said.
The goal of this bill is to increase awareness oncampus of the proper procedures for walking and biking, and hopefully, as a result, both sides will better understand and execute these procedures.
With this bill passed, a public statement will be made "making all students, faculty and staff on the Oxford campus aware of the laws that govern bicycling and the proper protocols for navigating around bicyclists as pedestrians," according to the bill.
"We aren't trying to change anything with this bill," Elizabeth Beumel, Secretary for Sustainable Initiatives, said. "We're just outlining the current problem and saying to Miami that they need to express their problems and make those aware of what the protocol is."
The second bill that was passed at the meeting was the BCRTA Bus Schedule Bill.
The main concern for the current bussing system is there are no minute-by-minute schedules posted anywhere on campus. Instead, there are schedules posted at certain stops with ranges, as high as 14 minutes, of when the buses could potentially arrive. This makes for an inefficient and unreliable system for those who take the bus.
As a result,BCRTA has created an app for students and faculty to searchthe bus schedules with minute-by-minute accuracy of arrivals; however, it is facing a production setback.
"$10,000 was already invested into the creation of the app, but there has been no productivity or work being applied to their hardware," Cole Tyman, Student Body President, said.
ASG hopes to resolve this issue by placing minute-by-minute bus schedules at all BCRTA Miami University routes.
The two bills were passed unanimously.
"There is no reason not to have these two bills passed," Senator Ifeoulu Clayton, Parliamentarian, saidduring debate of the bill. "It just shows another way that ASG is trying to help inform the student body."