Public Transit to SFU Needs Overhaul

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I am passing this along from the faculty forum at Simon Fraser University because I think it is an important issue that needs publicity. I invite commentary from others.

Kate

***

Hello everyone,

I have just stepped off another one of the incredibly crowded 145 SFU busses
and am extremely upset. I have spent in total probably about 3 hours waiting
to get on the bus this week with the experience on Tuesday morning of having
seven busses go by me down at Production Station before being able to board
a bus. I chose to take the bus for environmental reasons but am slowly
considering taking the car. ..

Besides being affected myself as a transit user, we as a SFU community are
all indirectly affected by this situtation. I try not to schedule my classes
at 9:30am anymore because I know that the majority of students will arrive
late due to the bus situation.

I am wondering if we as a SFU community can do anything about this
situation. I have called Translink and complained but was asked what I
thought could be done about the problem (am I the expert?) and told that
they are aware of it. I think it is one thing to go over numbers and
scheduling and another to actually stand at a bus stop with another three
hundred people, waiting, seeing one bus after another go by (regardless of
being on time or not)... or being in class having the lesson constantly
interrupted because students arrive late or not being able to start an exam
on time because half of the class is missing.

Furthermore, every student has to purchase a U-Pass - what happens to all
that money that Translink gets? What if SFU decided not to take part in the
U-Pass anymore? Can't we pressure Translink to improve their service? What
kind of service is this at the moment?

Today Translink had some people counting the busses and the people on the
busses... well they could have figured out themselves that if you send for
example 5 busses up, every bus is able to contain lets say 150 people that
then 750 people went up the hill... but what about the ones waiting at
Production Station (or anywhere else), the ones trying to get onto one of
those busses?

Hopefully something can be done soon. I am sure that soon many students will
decide to take the car up (what about our environmental friendly
university?) and that in a couple of weeks, line-ups will be back to normal
but not because Translink has improved service but because individual people
don't take the bus anymore...

Cheers,
Claudia Hein


--
Claudia Hein, M.A.
Lecturer for German
Language Training Institute/
Supervisor of the Language Learning Centre
Simon Fraser University - AQ 3020