CAR TROUBLES ARE PART OF COURSE MANAGEMENT.

Matt "Dean Dad" Reed discovers that Brookdale Community College was designed with the Suburban Experiment in mind.

For context, my college isn’t residential, and it doesn’t have subway service. There is local bus service, but it only runs when and where it runs; even after we worked with the bus company on scheduling, for most students and employees, it isn’t a practical option. And due to its location in the county, the main campus really isn’t walkable from anywhere except a few very upscale neighborhoods, which isn’t where we tend to draw.

I hear you, dear reader, he's writing about New Jersey, isn't he?

Yes.

That's Brookdale just east of Holmdel.  The map is zoomed out to include the site of the former Locomotive Workshop swap meet.  That property has since been sold.  More than a few of the diesels, as well as several of the steam locomotives you see on the Gloucester Branch, came out of that shop.

At one time, the proprietor hosted a swap meet, and that's why I'm vaguely familiar with the area.  It's possible to purchase some wide open space, even in New Jersey, including a house with some outbuildings suitable for machining metal.  The announcements of the swap meets included instructions on getting there by bus from a New Jersey Transit rail station, as, unusual though this might seem, there are people working in O Scale (which can consume a lot of space) living in thickly settled places like New York or Hoboken, and making do without a car.  But there was ample parking on the Locomotive Workshop grounds for people driving in from, shall we say, Illinois.

There's also ample parking at Brookdale, even if it's a first-come-first-served free-for-all.

Brookdale has the charming quirk of open parking, by which I mean it doesn’t have separate lots for faculty, staff and students. It’s all just parking, like at a mall. The downside of that is that my car has absorbed a few scratches and dings over the years. The upside is that I get a pretty good exercise in sociological fieldwork every time I walk to or from my car. I don’t see many late-model BMWs or Audis out there. Ten-year-old Corollas are well represented.

For students who are already struggling, and whose commutes may be a gallon each way, these costs add up quickly. Of course, gas isn’t the only thing getting more expensive, but for someone who has to get to campus for classes and who doesn’t live near a bus line, it’s essential.

Who knew that "free" community college might come bundled with a car as the price of getting there.  When that's the case, bad weather or a failed battery or what have you can come at the worst possible time, such as exam week.

It's probably scant consolation for Brookdale students keeping the beater going that the rudimentary bus service is some sort of a backup plan.  That might be easier than at Kiswaukee College.  "The 120-acre campus is located in a rural setting six miles west of Northern Illinois University in DeKalb County."  If you don't have a driving license, good luck.  "Kishwaukee College, in cooperation with Voluntary Action Center of DeKalb, provides limited bus transportation between the College and the DeKalb/Sycamore area through TransVAC and to the Rochelle area through the Lee-Ogle Transportation System (LOTS)."  Those towns are along the passenger-train-unfriendly Union Pacific.  If you're coming from Genoa or Cortland or Sandwich or Waterman, good luck!

It's more than the suburbs and the arterial roads that took shape in the expectation that personal transportation would always be a bargain.