Students' bus passes will be encoded on their Western Cards

After a three-year process, all student bus passes will soon be encoded onto the Western Student ID Card.

Starting August 16, students with summer 2010 bus passes were asked to participate in the first phase of the transition and will be continuing through September 10. This will help identify any problems that may arise with the new system before the encoding is implemented campus-wide for students.

Though on a strictly volunteer basis, more than 60 students have had their bus pass encoded onto their Western Card on only the third day of the phase-in.

Starting on September 13, students registered for fall classes will have their bus passes encoded on their ID cards at the Western Card office.

At this time only students will have their bus pass on their ID cards. Faculty and staff will continue to receive separate bus passes as they have done. The online application for FAC/STAFF passes is online at www.wwu.edu/transportation. Faculty and staff bus passes are normally delivered via campus mail; they are also available through the Transportation Service office in Viking Commons 25.

The implementation of this process, initially identified in 2007 as a goal of the student transportation program, was a collaborative effort from a number of different departments and divisions: University Residences, Western Card Office, Administrative Computing, ATUS, Telecommunications, Associated Students, Wilson Library and Sustainable Transportation, as well as the WTA, all contributed to the project.

For more information please contact Western Student Transportation at 360-650-7960 or transportation@wwu.edu.