The magic school bus (system)

It is easy for anyone to be a Debbie Downer and complain about one of the most widely used systems on campus. That being said, it is amazing how far ahead our bus system is with regard to other universities. Parking and Transportation was able to locate and return my phone back to me within five business days! (Note: if you find a lost phone, call the last person on it. It takes about one minute and saves that person quite a bit of hassle.) Said phones will come in handy once these GPS’s on buses start to work and hopefully will be a part of the mobile Duke app. But how would they be able to make the system even better? Money might help, but you’d have to go to the third derivative to find anything positive about our economy right now.

That being said, how many departments at Duke can say that they actually became better over the past year by cutting back? I’m really a fan of most of P&T’s changes. The biggest one was the elimination of the C-3. I know I loved to line up at the bus stop at 9:38 a.m. to get to Science Drive on time with all my science and math friends alike. I made legitimate friends on the C-3, and we all enjoyed the jovial Irish driver who would never stop the bus but always proclaim that he was “airing the bus out by opening the doors.” When I had to move on from him, I died a little inside, but I moved on quicker than Kim Kardashian did after breaking up with Reggie Bush. (Heads up: Now that she’s broken up with her next boyfriend, I’m going to reuse this joke in a few weeks. Hooray for being green.) Getting over that loss wasn’t hard as they now have the C-1 Class Change, which serves essentially the same purpose, but doesn’t run uselessly the other 90 percent of the time.

Another major change was the expansion of the C-2 and the simultaneous elimination of the C-4 route and C-1 late-night route. This is akin to trading bench depth at wideout for a starting RB—a windfall any way you look at it. Consequently, juniors on Central Campus can go to East Campus easily to study and freshmen, conversely, can figure out that Central exists without drunkenly stumbling onto a C-4. I think the best part of this by far is the need for only one driver per night for late Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Just think—would you want to drive a bus on a night you should be spending with your family, only to have to deal with, for the most part, ungrateful drunk students? Seriously, thank the bus driver and the guy that works at Pauly Dogs until 2 a.m. because those are some rough shifts (say that five times fast).

The last major change I’ve seen is the great increase in the day-to-day efficiency of the bus system. It was always fun to be waiting 20 minutes for a C-1 just to see four buses in a row pull up at once, only one of which actually had people in it. That’s happened a lot less this year, so kudos to whoever is responsible for assisting with that situation. They probably did this because they heard caravanning greatly increases the chances of you getting dysentery or having to ford a river with your moose, and we all know how that turns out.

Parking and Transportation, however, doesn’t deserve all the credit: The Bull City Connector is a City of Durham invention, albeit with some help from Duke friends. The Connector made “The Social Network” screening, offered only downtown, a lot more appealing to those that did not have a car. This has gleefully eliminated the annoying texts I get from people that only talk to me for my car to go downtown. Another route elimination, the C-6, has gone largely unnoticed, partially because it was like Rosie O’Donnell—not really useful in the first place and eliminated when people figured out she was outdated (but the C-6 did not give us “Harriet the Spy”).

Thank whoever made these spectacular changes. Now we can all ride the bus with less stress and be more receptive to hearing more Duke anecdotes like, “Which of the three pluralizations of Octopus is your favorite?”

Jeremy Steinman is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.