The addition of new busses in the campus area has not alleviated unsafe crowding, some riders say.In response to complaints from students, COTA added additional busses to two campus routes beginning in January. These routes are the No. 2 High Street route and the No. 18 route, which runs on Kenny Road and through campus. Travis Boggs, a freshman film major and a frequent COTA rider, said he has often seen more than six people standing on the bus.”I think that most times its (COTA) relatively safe, but when there’s more than six people standing up, that’s when it becomes a safety issue.”According to Patrick Bryant, COTA spokesman, there are 40 available seats on each bus with a standing capacity of 20 to 25 people.”Standing room only is still within the capacity of the bus,” Bryant said.Currently, no law exists mandating how many people may occupy a bus at any given time, according to Tom Yager, motor carrier safety programs manager for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.”There’s been talk about it from time to time, but if a law were passed it would probably be implemented nationwide, and many passengers don’t want this law because they might not be able to get on a bus if they need to,” Yager said.Yager added, in order for any regulation to be made, there would first have to be proof that a safety issue exists.Rebecca Dostie, a sophomore majoring in French, thinks everyone should be able to sit down.”Usually if [I] have to stand I feel like I might fall over. I never feel really safe, if there were an accident I feel like there could be injuries,” she said.Bryant said there is a difference between feeling unsafe and actually being unsafe on the bus in crowded situations. He said many cities have similar transportation systems, and in each case overhead rails are provided for standing passengers.”We are very sensitive to this problem and are investigating quite thoroughly when overcrowding and pass-ups occur, so that we might be able to add additional busses,” Bryant said.A pass-up is when a driver makes the decision to deny access to the bus to more passengers when overcrowding occurs.To Kevin Cope, chairman of the USG/COTA student advisory committee, the overcrowding problem has been solved.”I think most people are satisfied, but there is always room for improvement, we’re trying to adapt to each situation to work out all of the kinks,” Cope said.Students voted last January to pay an additional $9 per quarter for unlimited use of COTA busses. They will vote again in August on whether to keep the service.Since the deal between OSU and COTA went into effect last spring, there has been a 50 percent increase in student use according to Bryant. Exact figures for winter quarter 1998 are not available yet, but Bryant estimated that between 4,600 and 5,300 students ride COTA each weekday. Last autumn there were about 4,700 student riders per weekday.