For the second year in a row, The University of Alabama administration has changed the Crimson Ride bus routes, once again forcing students to adapt to longer, reduced evening transit options.
Last year, the proposed routes failed to provide efficient transportation for students, resulting in the Crimson Ride offering a modified route to and from student apartments. The revised schedule picked up at apartments every half hour with drop-off at the bus hub fifteen minutes later from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
This year, the routes from each apartment combine starting at 7 p.m. The combined route increases the route from 15 minutes to 45 minutes per bus cycle.
Already, students who rely on the bus routes are feeling abandoned and frustrated. Izzy Bergeron, a junior studying mechanical engineering, said the new routes ignore students with evening jobs, late labs and extracurricular activities.
“I think it’s ridiculous to change the schedule so that after 7 p.m. it could take over an hour to get back to your apartment,” Bergeron said. “I discovered upon trying to leave ‘Bama Jam’ at around 8, thinking I would take the 8:15 p.m. bus home. The bus that night didn’t even come, got stuck somewhere, so me and some others had to Uber home. There was no notice, no alternative bus sent, and the bus info desk was closed.”
The night of Bama Jam was not the only night students were stranded on campus. Jada Bussell, a senior majoring in human development and family studies, works for the UA Alumni Association. After her first shift back this semester, she and five others were stranded on campus when the new bus route severed service early.
“At 8 o’clock the bus had just left, so I was hopeful that there would be enough time for it to loop back around before 9 o’clock like the new TripShot app says,” Bussell said. “I track it on the app, and quickly realize it has left the route, and that’s when I got the sense of what was happening. They’re not coming back.”
At 8:50 p.m., the bus was already parked in the Crimson Ride Hub lot behind Baumhower’s Victory Grill. Andrew Jáuregui, a senior studying public relations and communication studies, got a call from his girlfriend shortly after. She was stranded on campus and needed a ride home.
“I wasn’t doing anything at home. Thankfully, it’s still just the second week of classes. I didn’t have to pause anything important to go and pick her up,” Jáuregui said. “But when you look at it in context, you have to see that these are students, even at 7, 8 or 9 o’clock at night because it only takes one person stranded on campus. ”
Both Bergeron and Bussell have already filed complaints with the new bus routes, receiving AI-generated messages referring students to the UA News announcement outlining the new bus routes. Bergeron said the announcement wasn’t accessible.
“When you searched for it, nothing came up. It was a sneaky change that they tried to sweep under the rug, claiming it was for financial reasons,” Bergeron said. “So now my bus service is worse, but my HOA payment that pays for it has not changed to reflect that.”
Bergeron said the University’s claim for consolidating the bus routes is based on the laws of supply and demand. Logically, fewer students use the buses in the evening, so combining the routes saves money and increases the rider-per-route ratio. But instead of increasing efficiency, the University has simply increased a margin of error.
“Did they think, well, we only expect, let’s say, half a dozen students to be left behind per day? That’s an acceptable number. I don’t want my girlfriend or anyone else to be thought of as an acceptable margin of error.” Jáuregui said. “And that, I think, is the message. It seems that students, and if they’re small enough in number, don’t matter to the University.”
The University’s rollout of this new bus route has left students frustrated and dependent on Ubers. Bussell said these resources should be accessible after the high out-of-state tuition costs and fees students already pay, furthering a message that participating in the college experience isn’t available to low-income students.
“You know not everyone can afford a car. Some people aren’t able to drive for multiple different reasons. So those buses really do give us the freedom to work,” Bussell said. “When they take that away, it just is very isolating. I know that it’s not a struggle that maybe a lot of people relate to, but at a university this large, I feel that those resources should be available to whoever needs them.”
Some students called on the University to default to the previous, reliable bus routes that ensured their safety and accessibility to the university.
“It’s not supposed to be efficient; it’s supposed to be safe and available,” Jáuregui said.
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