Okay University of Delaware students, it’s time to talk about buses, more specifically the UD shuttle system.
Just imagine: it’s 8:45 a.m, you have a class at 9:30 a.m on main campus but your dorm is on north campus. Not to mention, it’s also snowing and around 20 degrees outside. ‘Great, College Avenue is in three minutes,’ you think as you scurry to the bus stop to catch the bus. You are one of the first people standing in a jumble, but with only a minute before the bus arrives, thirty others flock around you! However, you find your way to the middle of the crowd, hoping the bus will pull up to near where you are. But of course, it doesn’t; in fact, it pulls up far from where the clump of freezing freshman are standing. Then, only 15 people are let on the bus before the driver says it is full and pulls away.
‘Oh well, the Academy Street bus comes in another 5 minutes,’ you think at 8:49 a.m. five minutes pass and it is still three minutes away! By then, the clump has grown. You move down to where the bus stopped last time, hoping it will stop there again. After another three minutes go by, it is 8:57 and the Academy Street bus comes and stops about 15 feet closer to the bus stop than you are. Everyone crowds around the entrance, the bus driver counts off people, then lets about six or seven people on before the bus is full. People begin leaving to walk to their classes on main campus, but the next bus is in six minutes. That one comes and goes once more and you are not able to squeeze on. Once more, the bus pulls away and it already 9:07 a.m. Your class is over a 20 minute walk and the next bus is not for another half hour. You speed walk to the ISE Lab or Alison Hall and make it to the building at 9:33 a.m. Your professor gives an annoyed look as you shuffle through the door to class and take the closest seat you can find.
For those of us who live on Ray Street, Independence, James Smith, Thomas Mckean, George Read or in the Towers, this is an everyday occurrence during the winter months and not just to class but from it too.
So UD, what can you do?
Well, as I am writing this article, there’s only six buses are running, including the east and west loops. We all know that the university owns more than six buses, as evidenced by the game day shuttles and the old buses taken out every once in a while to run. Residents of North Campus pay between $7,500 and $10,000 for a less than ideal location, holding onto hope that the empty promise of buses running continuously to get you to class on time will be fulfilled. With the cost of tuition and housing continuously on the rise I would like to ask, could some of that money go to running extra buses during peak hours of the day?