Students are growing frustrated at the longer rides and inaccurate arrival times of the C-Swift weekend buses, which they say creates longer bus rides between campuses and overcrowding on the buses.
In previous years, students were able to get from East Campus to West Campus on weekends using the C-1 bus. In February 2022, Duke replaced the C-1 weekend route with the C-Swift, which makes an additional stop at the Swift apartments on 300 Swift Avenue.
Some students are frustrated with the buses' inaccurate arrival times on TransLoc, Duke’s official app that tracks bus routes in real time.
First-year Ashita Birla was heading to West Campus for a meeting when she missed her bus by a minute.
“I just saw a bus leave. And I could have caught that,” she said. “But it doesn’t say it was leaving right now on the app.”
It then took 10 minutes for another C-Swift bus to arrive and take her to West Campus.
"I wish the app was more accurate, even more than the frequency of the buses,” Birla said. “If you know the exact frequency, no matter how bad it is, you can still plan around it.”
Similar to Birla, first-year Alyssa Guardado expressed frustration over the app’s unreliable departure times. But regardless of her attempts to plan out her schedule in accordance with the C-Swift, Guardado sometimes still doesn’t catch her bus.
“It’s very frustrating,” she said. “You're somewhere else on campus and you check the app and then you're like, oh, it goes in two minutes and then you come here and you have to wait another 10.”
Guardado also recalled times during weekend rush hours when the C-Swift shuttles were so full of students that she couldn’t get on. Instead, she had to wait for another bus which took even more time.
Sophomore Zachary Patterson said the C-Swift bus route was initially upsetting due to its infrequency compared to the C-1 bus, but noted that the switch doesn’t affect him as much as it did back when he was a freshman.
“Living on East Campus, I found it incredibly annoying,” he said. “As someone living on West Campus, it’s not as bad.”
But it isn’t just students who have noticed negative responses to the change in bus routes. Luis Juarez-Hernandez, who drives the weekend C-Swift bus, has been driving at Duke for six years. But he has only recently needed to tell riders that their stop is no longer on the weekend route.
The Arts Annex and Smith Warehouse are two stops that used to be on the weekend bus service, but are no longer offered on the new C-Swift weekend route. As a result, students and faculty who need to go to these locations are required to get off at earlier stops and walk the remaining distance.
The numerous issues with the current weekend bus service have students offering possible solutions to this problem. Many suggest putting more effort into fixing the TransLoc app so that the bus routes are reflected more accurately.
Others, including Guardado, have expressed a desire to add another bus route alongside the C-Swift.
“They should have more buses on the weekend, especially the C-1,” Guardado said. “I just think they should have one running on weekends. I think it's easier.”
The exact reasons behind the switch from the C-1 to the C-Swift route over the weekends are still unclear. Duke’s Parking and Transportation Services did not respond to a request for comment on the cause for the change.
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