An accident Thursday morning on Nicholson Drive was the only major problem Tiger Trails, the University’s new bus system, faced as it completed its first week of service.The accident occurred when a Tiger Trails bus carrying 10 passengers came to a stop at the Southgate Towers Condominiums, said Catherine Utt, First Transit general manager. Based on preliminary comments from those involved in the accident, an Acura Integra traveling behind the bus did not see the parked bus and slammed on its brakes and was rear-ended by a Pontiac Grand Am. The Acura swerved in front of the bus after being rear-ended, and the Pontiac rear-ended the bus. “The driver said she initially heard a large crash for the first impact, and because the parking brake was engaged, there was just a little jolt that she felt when the car became attached to her bumper,” Utt said. Utt said a spare bus arrived to bring passengers to campus, and there was little disruption to bus service. An investigation is still pending on the accident.  Other than the incident, Tiger Trails did not face any major problems in its first week of full service, Utt said. “Has it been perfect?” Utt said. “I’d say no. We’re learning the flow of the students.” Gary Graham, Office of Parking, Traffic and Transportation director, said the biggest issue has been the bunching of buses on the routes. “We’re working with the drivers so they learn their routes and with the dispatchers to hold them up if they start getting a little too close,” Graham said.Graham said the new service received a lot of feedback from students in its first week, which allows them to address any problems and fix them quickly. “We’re constantly evaluating,” Graham said. “As we get the data in, we’ll make adjustments. Some of the suggestions have been good … but until we can actually get it all ironed out, we’re not going to make any wholesale changes immediately.” The Tiger Land route still receives a lot of attention from students, Graham and Utt said.”It’s pretty slow,” said Garrick Huhner, electrical engineering sophomore. “Tiger Land is definitely better now than it was with CATS, but it’s still slow.” Utt said considerations are being made to improve the Tiger Land route and Tiger Trails added a bus Friday to ensure students were able to arrive on campus in time for their classes. “We not only had all four Tiger Land buses going through, but we had an extra bus out there just to make sure,” Utt said. “We’re going to continue to do that as long as we have the flexibility to do that.” The dispatchers know the University’s class schedule and will do what they can to ensure students can get on a bus, Utt said. “There are going to be instances where buses are full out on Tiger Land, and there’s nothing we can do about that,” Utt said. “But we’re making sure we have enough buses through there, so if one bus goes through and says, ‘I’m sorry guys, full load. I can’t get you on,’ another bus will be coming right away.” Overcrowding is still a problem, said Billy St. Andrews, construction management junior.”It’s crowded in the mornings, but that’s understandable,” St. Andrews said. “But they can’t really improve it anymore. It’s a good system.”The Highland-Burbank route also has crowding problems, said Hailey Tumminello, anthropology sophomore. “Sometimes I have to stand up,” Tumminello said. “They need more buses in the afternoon because everyone is using them in the afternoons.”TransLoc Transit Visualization System, Tigers Trails’ real-time locator provider, not only allows passengers to track their bus, but also provides officials with important information on the buses, like a bus’s location at a specific time during the day. A time schedule for Tiger Trails based on this information is in the works, Graham said. “We worked out a time schedule based on the summer traffic, but that wasn’t a good indicator,” Graham said. “This week or next week, with the report we can get off of TransLoc, we’ll be able to come up with headway times.” Students can follow their bus and register for mobile access online at http://lsu.transloc.com. Riniah Kelly, political science freshman, said she will eventually register her cell phone for Transloc’s mobile access. “I really like the GPS,” Kelly said. “I used to not know how to find my bus, but I called the parking office, and they directed to the Web site. Now, I know when I can catch the bus.”James Hawthorn, biology sophomore, is another fan of the real-time locator.”I like how you can track it online,” Hawthorn said. “It’s very cool.”—-Contact Brianna Paciorka at [email protected]