The Tiger Trails bus system is at the wake of failure.
Though many routes probably need more buses, the one route in particular I have experienced tremendous issues with is the Nicholson-Ben Hur route. The route stops at a large number of the big student housing complexes, including Oakbrook Apartments, Southgate Towers Apartments in Baton Rouge, The Woodlands, Arlington Cottages & Townhomes, Wildwood Baton Rouge, The Exchange at Baton Rouge Apartments and others.
There is only one bus on the Nicholson-Ben Hur route. A single bus takes 35-50 minutes to make one full round to pick students up and drop them off, and you may have to wait even longer if the bus if full when it reaches your stop. The University offers the bus system as a good alternative to off-campus parking, so there should be more buses available for major routes.
Some of the Nicholson-Burbank buses run through Ben Hur as well, but this bus does not stop at all of the complexes such as Wildwood, The Exchange, The Woodlands and Southgate.
In an effort to get to class, some students will attempt to race across Burbank and dodge moving vehicles to get to the stops that are on different routes.
Considering the bus route takes over half an hour, you will absolutely be late for class if you miss your stop. Even if you play things safe, you’ll still end up getting to class at an awkward time that leaves you sitting outside your next class for an hour or longer. If neither of those work for you, your only other option is to drive to campus and hope you don’t get a $30 parking ticket, if you can even find a spot.
A bus driver on the Highland-Burbank bus has commented that the lack of a second bus on the Nicholson-Ben Hur bus route has impacted his route in a negative way. Since new complexes like Wildwood and The Exchange have popped up, his route is often times full before 9 a.m. from students walking over to different stops. When buses are full like this, the driver must stop at each stop and tell students they cannot get on.
I don’t think requesting more buses so students can get to class is an outlandish request considering we go to the largest university in Louisiana. If the University can afford to dish out money on new juice bar in the Student Union, they can afford to get students to class on time.
We are all at the University with the same goal: Graduation. If we do not have a way to adequately get to class, we cannot meet that goal. A good amount of professors here take off points for being late and missing classes, so students deserve a more reliable way to make it class safely and easily. There’s been multiple occasions I have been docked points for being late for class even though I left my apartment an hour before class even started.
The bus situation is serious and needs to be tended to immediately. With an increase in student population as well as additional complexes being built each year, the University needs to keep up with the bus count in order to ensure all students can get to campus.
Casey Pimentel is an 19-year-old mass communication sophomore from The Woodlands, Texas.
