The editorial is the opinion of the editorial board.

When a horse comes up lame, it’s traditionally been considered merciful to end its life. That said, someone needs to put a bullet in the Panther Express.

It was an ambitious idea at the beginning, one supported by Eastern and this newspaper. It may be the biggest thing Student Senate has done for the campus in the last five years, and its outlook was decidedly rose-colored at its inception.

It’s pretty much been downhill from there.

Once it was definitively determined that student fees would be needed to operate the shuttle bus, students began to grumble, but most of us saw it coming and weren’t too surprised.

And once the little bus that couldn’t began chugging around campus and the city, we all waited patiently for it to catch on with the student body.

Unfortunately, it never truly did. Nor was it all that popular with Charleston businesses, which senate members expected to pony up some cash for the operating expenses since the bus would be delivering students to off-campus stops. The response was lukewarm at best.

Then we all started realizing that a bus that comes by once an hour doesn’t do anyone much good. This is when experimentation with the bus route began, and although examples of the confusing and constant changes would be helpful in supporting our argument, we couldn’t keep track of the ever-shifting stops, routes and schedules, much like the rest of Eastern.

Soon we had two little buses that couldn’t chugging around. Naturally, this required more student money, which naturally caused more grumbling. The bus routes were again tinkered with, and schedules were reprinted for the umpteenth time.

Students occasionally rode the bus when they could find it, when it wasn’t broken down or involved in a traffic accident.

Then, earlier this year, H & H Transportation, the company operating the shuttle bus, realized it didn’t carry the ones properly in its books and couldn’t operate the bus with the money Eastern was paying. So they, for all intents and purposes, quit. Eastern rewarded this breach of contract by considering them again to run the shuttle bus, this time at a higher cost to the university.

Now Student Senate is saying the student fees will have to nearly double, to over $10, to operate the bus.

Enough is enough. After three years where the only consistent trait of the program was inconsistency, it’s time to put the Panther Express out of its misery. Eastern shouldn’t even consider raising student fees – who doubles their prices for a season ticket when the team has yet to win anything?

In fact, it should just let the shuttle bus die quietly. A good idea hasn’t worked out, and we should all be honest enough to admit it.