As if it were possible, Normaltown just got even cooler: free bus service up and down Prince Avenue every 20 minutes both ways, compliments of the University of Georgia Health Sciences campus. It’s true: you’re welcome aboard. If you’re going to town, you can stroll through the now-reopened-to-the-public, lovely old Normal School campus to the new, covered bus stop at the corner of Buck and Fox roads. (Buck is the first entrance off Oglethorpe Avenue. Fox is a long block into the campus.) Or, you can catch the Health Sciences bus at any city bus stop along Prince, but you have to signal for the bus to stop. Non-Health Sciences UGA students are already catching on to the convenience of the Prince Avenue bus, and they’re increasingly waiting at the Athens Transit stops.

Will the free and more frequent Health Sciences bus put the #5 and #7 Prince Avenue buses out of business? Nah. The #5 and the #7 go all the way out to the Homewood Hills Shopping Center and back around on Baxter Street, so the Health Sciences run is not going to replace them, just cut down on their ridership along Prince.

The Health Sciences bus is, after all, a campus-to-campus service. You can get on and off downtown near the corner of Broad and Hull streets below the Holiday Inn or up the hill and around the corner at Wray Street on Lumpkin. The rest of the stops are on campus. So, if you’re using the Health Sciences bus to commute downtown, you’ve still got to walk some distance to get where you’re going, but that’s always true of the bus.

The Health Sciences bus along Prince Avenue is a revolutionary development. The Health Sciences bus is free and frequent, whereas Athens Transit only runs every hour and costs $1.50. With a free bus every 20 minutes between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., you’ve got flexibility. You can run downtown, knowing that you can come back home when you need to—at no cost. This is a giant step ahead of Athens Transit, where you’ve got to time your trip carefully both ways, if you don’t want to get stuck for an hour. And be warned: the Health Science buses run on a strict schedule, so you can save 20 minutes by being on time.

The UGA bus system already works to move thousands of students around campus every day. It works because students have already paid for the service and because they have no alternative unless they walk or ride a bike. UGA also pays Athens Transit over a million dollars a year, so that university students and personnel can ride city buses without charge, and in fact 63 percent of Athens Transit ridership comes from the university. Maybe it would be cost effective for the city to pay the university to operate Athens Transit as an extension of the campus bus system, like the Health Sciences bus: free and frequent. Athens citizens can already ride the university buses for free. That system could be expanded by a merger with Athens Transit to cover the town as well as the campus.

Critics of the city bus system say it costs too much and nobody uses it. People do use it, of course, but wouldn’t they ride the bus more if it were free and frequent? Of course they would. What would it take to have a free and frequent bus service all over Athens-Clarke County? Higher taxes, but not much higher—a couple of mils? Would it be worth the cost to us taxpayers? Of course it would. With free and frequent buses all over town, we would ride them to work, to school, to shop. It would be the single best investment we could make in pulling our community out of the poverty that afflicts a third of our citizens. It would pull the rest of us out of traffic and get our exhaust out of our air. We’d have to walk more, but that would show up in better health.

The trolley that used to run on Prince Avenue made Cobbham and Boulevard, as well as Normaltown, popular places to live. The Health Sciences bus is going to make these areas even more desirable. This new amenity along Prince could show us how to make all of Athens more desirable for everybody.

NEWS-FLASH: Dependents of UGA staff and retirees can no longer ride Athens Transit free. All the more reason for those who live along Prince Avenue to welcome the Health Sciences bus.