This August, students returned to school excited for a new semester, new classes, and new memories. The morning of the 25th, students woke up for class and trudged over to their respective bus stops, only to discover the disaster that is the new FAST Routes for the Seminole Express.
Whereas in past years, there were eight buses (Heritage Grove, The Village, Garnet, Gold, Torch, Tomahawk, Osceola, and Renegade), with generally two buses for each route, and every route going around campus before leaving its premises, bus traffic was easy to manage. Sure, there were those days that everyone clambered onto the Heritage Grove and you got really close to your fellow students. However, these new bus routes take that closeness to a whole new level.
They removed the Torch route and merged the Garnet with the Heritage Grove, the latter meaning that a vast amount of the most popular apartment complexes are now on the same route, making for an extremely intimate bus riding experience. With probably 60% of campus riding the same bus together at any given time, getting to know your fellow student has never been easier. If you’re lucky enough to have a seat, be prepared to have that girl from your bio class probably sitting in your lap, just trying to get home. If you’re standing, don’t expect to find anything to hold onto, so prepare yourself to cling tightly to a buff dude’s frat tank for stability.
Photo source: transportation.fsu.edu
These new routes also foster a new sense of competition amongst students, as students will not hesitate to elbow you in the eye to try and get a spot on the bus.
As if this debacle wasn’t enough, the buses no longer run on campus, save for the Renegade. The University Center C stop has been turned into the transfer point for all off-campus routes, which makes for quite the sight as the Renegade rolls up. Upwards of fifty tired, angry students who haven’t been on time to class since May 2014 inch slowly and sort of creepily towards the bus like walkers in a scene from The Walking Dead. However, after so many complaints, stops on Call Street and Chieftan have been added to certain routes.
To make matters worse, students can also now expect biweekly changes to the bus routes that go completely unannounced and only serve to make the routes worse. The first unannounced update was the addition of the Heritage Grove, which now makes two buses run by Ocala Road for absolutely no reason. The second was the addition of the Renegade B, which does the campus loop in reverse. All this has done is increase student anger levels, as well as wait times for the next bus. Whereas before this update, once two Renegades, stuffed to the brim, drove past you, it was totally okay because there were two more literally right behind it, slightly less stuffed to the brim. Now, once the bus driver wags his finger like Dikembe Mutombo so as to say, “no, no, no, not on my bus,” students can expect to wait anywhere between twenty minutes to three days for the next bus.
The most recent, and most vastly fascinating of the updates is that the Renegade A no longer drops students off at the Westcott stop, but instead unloads them at the base of the hill. And then drives slowly next to the students as they dejectedly shuffle up the hill, presumably while laughing at their pain.