Yeah, this'll work... Suggestions, please!

[margaretc]

Duke University shares many wonderful traits with its peer institutions. However, it appears that Duke is falling behind its peers in the area of transportation benefits, and would do well to 'Get on the bus'. A quick survey of peer and neighbouring universities shows that many of them offer fully subsidised transit passes to employees and students, and many more offer reduced-rate passes or the option of purchasing bus passes with pre-tax dollars. Stanford, Dartmouth, Brown, Oberlin, and Arizona State all offer free bus passes to their employees and students, as do UNC and NCSU (among many other Triangle employers: discount). Harvard, Tufts, and Cornell offer discounted passes, and Rutgers, Princeton, and Yale offer the pre-tax purchase option. Colorado State University, which also offers free bus passes, has done a study of several university campuses and has found that in many instances, it is cheaper to subsidise one employee's bus pass than it is to build another parking space for that employee (PDF). Studies have shown that regular transit use has environmental and health benefits for riders as well as for the local environment, and helps reduce stress levels in regular riders.
Furthermore, there are social benefits, not just from meeting new people on the bus but also from reducing traffic congestion. Transit system funding is calculated by the federal government according to how many riders a system has, so the more people who ride the bus, the more money the transit system is eligible for. If Duke helps increase the ridership on TTA buses, it could speed up the building of a regional rail network.