Media Coverage

By CAREN HALBFINGER
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Originally Published by The Journal News on June 5, 2006)

Posted by Permission

Steven Shaffer used to live in his car.

As a salesman for a copier company, he logged 17,000 miles a year throughout Westchester and Rockland counties.

Nowadays, his odometer barely blinks.

As an admissions associate for Berkeley College in White Plains, Shaffer, 26, now leaves his car in a lot near his White Plains condo and walks to work a lot happier.

"I've lost 15 pounds since I started walking," he said. "It's good for me physically. It's good for my car, because I don't put so many miles on it. It's good for my wallet. And one less car on the road is good for the environment."

Not everyone lives close enough to walk to work. Still, many who could take a bus or train don't.

Maybe they can't conceive of giving up the driver's seat, despite the ever-climbing cost of gas. But perhaps they'll dip their toes into the public transportation pool on Thursday.

That's National Dump the Pump Day, when transportation agencies are encouraging people to ditch their cars and ride mass transit.

"Where else do you get the opportunity to sleep with 125,000 strangers and save fuel costs at the same time?" joked Dan Brucker, a spokesman for Metro-North Railroad. "Not only can you sleep, you can work on your laptop, enjoy a movie, read a book you've always wanted to finish and count the money you're saving on gas. It gives you the opportunity to be very private or, indeed, meet new friends. Try doing that in your car! The kind of communication you have with other drivers seems to be limited to hand signals."

Shaffer's daily stroll also has cut down on parking tickets. He takes the long way home from his office at 99 Church St., about a 25-minute walk, turning on Barker Avenue to North Broadway, crossing Grant Street to North Kensico Avenue to home. In the morning, his MP3 player blasts Metallica. For the walk home, Billy Joel or Frank Sinatra set the mood.

Berkeley College, a private business school, moved to the city in 2001 from Red Oak Lane in Harrison partly to make the college more accessible by public transportation. While that provided a steady source of local part-time jobs, housing and entertainment for the school's 215 resident students, it was hard on some of the 400 commuter students and some employees, who spent too much time searching for a parking spot.

"What we didn't anticipate was people are so attached to their cars," said Christine Richard, the campus operating officer and vice president of enrollment. "We have some staff, faculty and students that did have to commute from areas where it isn't easy to get public transportation and when they got to White Plains, parking is expensive and it was difficult to find."

This past year, Berkeley began promoting the benefits of walking or taking mass transit to school. The promotion coincided with the temporary closing of the former Sears garage as part of Wal-Mart's renovations on Main Street. Without the garage, demand for parking was even harder to meet.

"As I was hiring new staff, I really started looking for people who could commute without driving a car," Richard said.

So far, four of the 42 nonfaculty employees walk to work, including two librarians and the director of academic support.

Some staff, students and faculty also come and go by train, including Kevin Hill, 46, the college's new director of external affairs. Hill commutes up to two hours each way from his Milburn, N.J., home by NJ Transit and Metro-North Railroad.

"I would absolutely recommend it," he said. "When I get on the train, I let someone else do the driving. It's very nice to just sit back. I think it puts a couple extra years on your life.