By Liam Anderson

The Clackamas Print

Public transportation is considered essential for getting around, especially if that place is where your education resides. Clackamas Community College offers a great option to those who live in areas close to the Clackamas Town Center or Harmony campus — the CCC Xpress Shuttles. However, the scheduling of the shuttles need to be questioned.

As many students know, the shuttles run all the way in the morning from 6:45 a.m., starting at Clackamas Town Center, to coming back to there before the evening at 6:27 p.m.

This happens from Monday-Thursday, and at different times the shuttles might leave straight to the Oregon City Campus, or will either leave to Harmony and then Oregon City.

Most don’t know why this is. It’s the way the schedule has worked for years now, but the bigger question leads to what happens on Fridays. Why do the shuttles stop going out in the afternoon?

Most people don’t know the answer to this question. The popular answer is usually because of a lack of funds, or that there aren’t many classes in the afternoon on Fridays.

The lack of funds is a vague answer, so it can easily be dismissed, but if you open your CCC Catalog of classes, you will see that there are more than a dozen classes that end in the afternoon on Fridays.

So, for the students who need it, why not consider reworking the schedule for those students that need the transportation?

The Xpress shuttle is definitely popular enough for it to be used for students that need it desperately. Even if there aren’t as many students taking it on Friday, there are still some with classes that ride the shuttle and need a way back to the Town Center.

Taking one of the TriMet buses at the campus back to the Clackamas Town Center takes too long. The ride is at least an hour and 30 minutes, but with delays that can easily change into 2 hours and 30 minutes.

CCC Staff who are in charge of the scheduling of the shuttles need to look into the statistics of how many people come from Clackamas Town Center that use the shuttle to get to CCC, and look at how many classes end on a Friday afternoon. Maybe then, considerations will be made.