Duke Parking and Transportation Services has altered Duke’s bus routes in an attempt to make it easier for students to get around campus.
The new routes include a weekday route from West to Central Campus—the C4—and another weekday route—the C5—connecting East to Central Campus. These two routes will replace the now-discontinued C2 bus service, which used to take students between all three campuses. The Central Campus Express bus will connect the three campuses at night and on weekends. Additionally, the C3 bus, which connects East Campus and Science Drive, will run continuously during weekdays instead of only running during class changes.
“PTS had looked at bus routes and decided to switch them around,” said junior Annie Adair, Duke Student Government chief of staff. “They had analyzed that there was room for more efficient routing.”
PTS Director Carl DePinto was behind the changes and sought to increase the efficiency of the existing system.
“We’ve worked to analyze as much Duke transit passenger information as we can in order to modify routes to best benefit the Duke community,” he said in a brief statement. “We believe this to be a positive outcome for the Duke community based on discussions around student class schedules for the new academic year.”
The last time changes were made to bus routes was in 2011, when the C1 Express route was added. The C1X upset some students by bypassing stops on Campus Drive, but PTS did not make any changes to the route. This time, however, student interests were accommodated in the form of the C5 route after DSG reached out to PTS. The C1X route has also been eliminated. Buses that formerly served the C1X route will now serve the C1 route.
The new bus system initially did not include the C5 route connecting Central and East on weekdays, explained DSG President Keizra Mecklai, a senior.
“The alternative that PTS mentioned is that students who live on Central could walk out to Campus Drive and catch the C1, but a big concern with that was that if C1s are full then it will make a huge difference in travel time for students living on Central,” she said. “It was a big priority for DSG to think about inequalities in housing for students, and we didn’t want to further entrench those inequalities by making travel times longer.”
Mecklai then met with DePinto and Alison Carpenter, PTS transit planner and transportation demand manager, to discuss accommodations for students on Central.
“I mentioned that despite the fact that their routes might represent high efficiency, we have students who live on Central who have classes on East Campus and that it would be important to provide buses to make their travels as convenient as possible,” she said.
Adair, who lives on Central Campus, helped Mecklai come up with alternatives to the initial PTS plan in order to make room for a bus to move students from Central to East Campus.
Possible alternatives included changing a C4 into a C2 during the day. However, since the C2 runs on a 35-minute loop, some students would have had to miss class time or go out of their way while waiting for or riding the bus.
“We all talked and figured that the best option would be a C5 which would connect East and Central,” Mecklai said. “Though it wouldn’t be on a class change, students won’t have to go excessively out of their way to get to class on time.”
Student responses toward the new routes were mixed.
“I think Duke is going to have to adapt and change like they already have,” said junior Lorenzo Babboni. “I think someone came in with great ideas from an administrative point of view by saving time and buses, but I think they forgot about the students.”
Students also commented on the inconvenience posed by a new route that does not go to West Campus.
“I liked it when all buses at some point used to go to the West Campus bus stop and the East Campus bus stop,” said sophomore Dev Dabke. “I also don’t understand the motivation for creating two new bus lines with two new schedules because it’s just one more thing to figure out.”
The new bus routes and schedules can be found on the PTS website.
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