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Introduction
From providing educational information on campus to implementing a new shuttle route, we present a clear plan to deliver over the next four years. Through developing a transportation website and facilitating access to printable resources, we will attain our greater goal of educating members of our greater Lewis & Clark College community, including students, staff, and faculty. We are additionally proposing a transportation model that would help build towards Lewis & Clark College's long-term goal of strengthening the relationship between our college and the greater Portland area, and the college's intention to reduce the SOV rate to 40% by 2035.
Long-Term Goals and Implementation Plans
1. Printable and Online resources for New Student Orientation beginning with the Class of 2030
By connecting with the New Student Experience Coordinator, we plan to implement non-expiring QR codes included in the New Student Orientation packets. This link will lead to our digitized pamphlet that includes all the condensed information on transportation at Lewis & Clark College. The second phase is to obtain funding for printable pamphlets if our online resources are deemed successful.
We want to develop a way to receive feedback from students on their experience using the pamphlets to make improvements. From this point, we can make changes to the pamphlets to either specifically help new students or expand the resources for the broader Lewis & Clark College population.
Though we currently don't have a source of NSO transportation feedback, we estimate that 70% of new students will feel more comfortable navigating Portland as a result of having the pamphlet as a resource in the class of 2030 NSO group.
2. Developing a transportation resource website
Our biggest catch-all solution is a website harboring all the information collected about transportation thus far. This would consist of existing resources we have, or information we have created such as QR codes for the pamphlet, links to purchase L&C-subsidized TriMet passes, a list of connections between the Otterbus and TriMet stops, and the beginning of a way to connect carpoolers.
We aim to increase the number of commuters using the shuttle and carpooling from 7% to 10%, and ideally connect these users to TriMet lines, increasing TriMet commuting from 2% to 10%. (Transportation & Parking, 2025)
The current method for connecting carpoolers is defunct, and our idea of including this on an app/website requires a secure method for connecting students and payment. Furthermore, the current Lewis & Clark College transportation app lacks accessible transportation resources and live Otterbus tracking. After reaching out to an Lewis & Clark College CS professor and our transportation director, Joey Zayas, our initial idea of developing an app rather than a website was revealed to be an unfeasible solution due to cost and maintenance. Zayas quoted a $10,000 initial cost with a $5,000 annual budget necessary to run and maintain an app externally. Pending the success of the website, we recommend investing in a L&C Transportation app.
3. Proposing an Otterbus route with better TriMet integration
Lewis & Clark College has worked with transportation experts, L&C population feedback, and our service contractor, ecoShuttle, to create a new route for our student shuttle, the Otterbus. As a secondary option, a group of students in our class with experience in public transportation created a route* with more accessibility to the L&C population. This group of students' proposed route provides 15 different connections between our shuttle and TriMet lines, with an emphasis on East-West connectivity, prioritizing the most common zip codes collected in the 2025 T&P Survey.
Furthermore, the survey we created and issued as a class was able to provide specific feedback about the route. Qualitative input collected in the survey, which was distributed out as flyers on all three campuses, as well as through an email sent out to the CAS faculty and staff forum, revealed frustration about the current proposed Otterbus route. Both those surveyed online and small groups surveyed in person favored the student-created route.
Lewis & Clark College should strive to represent the voices of its community; with more surveys and receptions about transportation, this will be achieved.
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