As of last week, any Ohio State student riding COTA buses must have a red BuckID, the current design, to ride for free. The move comes as an effort to stop Columbus residents who are not current OSU students from taking advantage of the free ride policy.

“We’re trying to grant rides to people who are paying for them,” said Ed Garger, a spokesman for COTA.

Students pay a quarterly fee of $9, which allows them to ride all COTA buses with their BuckID.

“We’re doing this to protect current students from paying for non-students,” said Ruth Gerstner, spokeswoman for the Office of Student Affairs.

Since 2000, the university has been issuing the current red BuckID to students, Gerstner said. Some students and staff have still been using an older version of the card with a white background instead of the current red background, Gerstner said.

Garger said that up until recently, COTA was accepting most BuckIDs from students. This allowed for many non-students with outdated BuckIDs to continue riding for free.

Gerstner said the decision by COTA and the university to only accept the red BuckID is a way to root out the people riding the buses who are not students.

“We’ve had people that graduated ten years ago still using it,” Gerstner said.

Garger said the decision to only accept the current red BuckIDs was also made to make the job easier for the operators. Garger said COTA has not been able to incorporate an electronic scan of BuckIDs due to the complexity of the card. As a result, the drivers have been left with the task of visually scanning the ID.

By forcing everyone to have the same ID, the job will be a little easier for the operator. Garger said this will help the driver stay on schedule.

Beginning in January, COTA, along with the university’s Student Advisory Committee, began an intensive campaign to spread the word about the change.

Garger said the campaign was mainly intended for graduate students – as well as faculty – because they were the people most likely to use an outdated BuckID.

According to Gerstner, any current student who possesses an outdated BuckID can exchange it without cost for a new, red card.