It’s a Friday night and you’re playing pool with your friends. The night is still young. You all decide to go out and find some holiday festivities in the Pittsburgh suburbs. The only problem is, how are you going to
get there?

Some students don’t have the best access to transportation. If you own a car, there’s limited space to put it on campus. It would be better to sell the car you have and use the money for living expenses, because keeping the car is going to be a waste of resources. While you say that commuter students have cars at home and that works, but what do you do when few people commute?

Let’s say everyone you know lives on campus with no access to anywhere outside of the city. The options left are public transportation: Port Authority Bus lines and the T. While these do get the job done, they are impractical for young adults who are going to be out past the last bus or are too far away from the T stations or bus stops.

Students come from far and wide to find that they are trapped within the city limits because few students keep a car on or around campus.

Most colleges are in an area that is all their own. Most of the campus is covered in students who are exclusive to that university. But here, in Pittsburgh, the city is our campus. We run into pedestrians all day long and we have no idea if they go to Point Park. Is that guy a professor or just a yinzer in a 90’s Steelers coat?

The campus provides students with amazing connections across the city, but the downside is that we deal with living in a city that has very little space.

We don’t have access to parking permits. We can’t get a lease and we don’t have cars. In most moments we don’t mind, we love our campus and the city life. But on those Friday nights, when the holiday season is calling your name, a car sounds like a blessing.

What is the answer to this struggle? Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I would tell you to call an Uber if you have the money for it. Take the bus all the way there if you know you’ll have a ride back. Make friends with the commuter students who could potentially have access to a car.

Or maybe accept the benefits of our beautiful city campus outweigh the “tragic” scenario of being confined to the city on the weekends. 

Maybe go explore the city or take the short journey over the Smithfield Street Bridge to the South Side. Embrace the fact that we do pay tuition in order for this city to be our
campus.