It’s around 8:50 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. You’re standing in the loop in front of the Student Union, alternating between looking at your watch and at then glancing hopefully towards Ellicott. You’re wondering how the hell you’re going to explain being late for your 9:00 a.m. class on South Campus for the seventh time in a row. With each passing second, your chances of not pissing off your temperamental biology professor get smaller and smaller. Finally, at 8:53 a.m. (somewhere during your thirtieth minute of waiting), your salvation arrives—a beat up and dirty Coach USA bus. Unfortunately, that salvation is 23 minutes behind schedule, there are 70 other people standing at the bus stop who want to be saved just as badly, and the transit messiah only seats 35. You’re going to be late again, but that’s okay—the next bus will arrive shortly, about ten minutes early.
For the handful of North Campus residents who have classes on South and for many South Campus residents who have to get to North and back every day, this nightmare has been daily routine for as long as they have been in that position. While this semester sees clean, new buses replacing the dilapidated collection of generic tour buses of years past, the jury is still out as to whether the practical quality of the service has improved.
“[The buses] look all right,” noted Brett Decker, a junior history major who lives in the University Heights neighborhood. “The bus service is better, but it still sucks. I have to use the bus to get to work on Sundays, and there’s only one every hour.” He also hasn’t noticed any improvement to the overcrowding problem. “They’re still too crowded. I end up standing half the time.”
Last year, with the end of Coach USA’s bus service contract looming, the administration began a search for a replacement for the University at Buffalo’s troubled private transit system. After a lengthy process, a five year deal was reached with Cognisa Security, Inc. of Atlanta, GA. Cognisa is, according to their website, “a commercial security and transportation solutions provider with more than 30 offices and 5,500 employees throughout the continental United States. With 25 years of U.S. experience, Cognisa provides security officers, concierge attendants, valet services, and shuttle bus transportation at businesses, colleges, airports, and office parks.” Michael Spanton, an Operations Manager with Cognisa’s Rochester office, confirmed that the company is currently repositioning itself in the market away from security and more aggressively developing its transportation services.
According to UB news service press releases, they were chosen on the strength of their reputation for providing solid service to other institutions of higher education, including Texas State University and Georgia Tech.
At Georgia Southern University, where Cognisa began providing transportation services earlier this fall, officials are pleased with the company’s performance. Bob Chambers, Director of Transportation Services at GSU, had nothing but good things to say about them.
“Cognisa has done a great job for us thus far,” he said. Riders are picked up and dropped off from one of the various bus stops on the GSU campus—which serves 16,000 students and is slightly larger than UB’s North Campus—roughly every ten minutes. “The students have been very pleased,” said Chambers, who could remember no serious complaints.
Unfortunately, this success may not have translated quite as well to UB. The new fleet of 25 blue and white buses, specially designed for the university and named the “UB Stampede” after a student competition, has been operating since May 16 and made its official debut to most of the student population during the first week of classes. While the service is still fairly new to most students, opinions are being formed quickly.
“Sometimes seven buses to Ellicott will come and go while I’m waiting for a bus to Goodyear,” complained freshman musical theater major Kelsey Mathes. Eliza Maher, also a freshman music theater major, reported that the situation wasn’t any better at the other end of the route.
“I’ve seen three buses leave Goodyear for North Campus at the same time,” she said. “Then I have to wait for more than 20 minutes for another bus to show up.”
Chris Austin, the Adjudication and Transportation coordinator for UB Parking and Transportation, said that while there have been some complaints lodged with his office, the change-over to Cognisa has generally been enthusiastically accepted.
“The new bus service has been well-received across the board,” he said. “We’ve received positive comments about the improved appearance of the buses and the consistency of the service, as well as driver courtesy.”
According to Austin, problems with the inter-campus bus route probably have more to do with the adverse traffic situation around South Campus—a factor which falls outside of UB’s control—than anything else.
“There are 15 buses running during peak hours, 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., from Monday to Friday,” he said. “If buses are bunching up, it’s most likely due to the heavy road construction at Main and Bailey. Delays at that intersection are unavoidable right now.” He expects some of the issues to lessen as construction season winds down in the coming weeks.
The situation is somewhat better for the Ellicott to Lee Loop route, according to Greg Brown, a senior business major. “From what I’ve seen, they don’t sit idle in the tunnel for extended periods of time like they did last year,” he said. “As for how accurate the times are, I really don’t know. There’s a bus every few minutes, so there’s no point in checking the schedule.”
Brown has also been impressed by the drivers. “It’s far less frustrating,” he said. “Last year you could end up sitting on the bus for ten minutes while the driver took an extended smoke break.”
Still, there are complaints about overcrowding on those buses, especially earlier in the morning and when classes let out in the mid-afternoon. One Ellicott resident suggested that the problem might be worse because of UB’s new parking rules, which forbid resident freshmen from parking on the spine during the day.
Austin doesn’t see it that way. “Use of the Ellicott to Lee Loop buses has remained relatively consistent over past years,” he said. “We’re only seeing a slight increase this year. Seven to nine thousand passengers travel it every day between seven in the morning and five in the evening, when there are five buses serving that route.” As for the crowding, he said internal monitoring of the transit system hasn’t revealed any serious strains.
While the Stampede certainly looks cleaner than the eclectic mix of vehicles employed in years past, the switch to Cognisa also brought about the retirement of five eco-friendly shuttles which served in that fleet, raising concerns about a potential decline in cleanliness of the air in certain areas. The buses, which ran on relatively clean-burning compressed natural gas (CNG), were contracted separately from Coach USA and were set aside in favor of diesel-fueled vehicles operated as part of the larger transportation contract with Cognisa.
Fred Smeader is the Manager of Engineering Services for UB Facilities Planning and Design and is also a member of UB’s Environmental Task Force (ETF) who is involved with the UB Green program. He says that this issue has been raised by campus groups like the ETF, although he is unsure how heavily it factored in the administration’s choice of service provider.
“We initially began using the CNG vehicles because the diesel buses were causing air quality problems in Ellicott that we were not able to solve by making changes to the complex,” he said. “The CNG buses really helped that problem.”
As for the impact of the change back to diesel, Smeader isn’t entirely sure. He noted that a representative from Cognisa spoke to the ETF about the new buses last month. “He said that the engines are well-designed and comparable in emissions to the CNG vehicles we have used in the past,” said Smeader. While that may be reassuring to some, he added that he was only relaying what Cognisa had told him, and he couldn’t confirm or deny their claims himself.
Spanton, the representative for Cognisa said, “We currently have an on-site manager for UB, Owen Toale, who is handling matters relating to the bus service. He works closely with Chris Austin.” Parking and Transportation Services is currently handling all complaints and comments about the new bus service internally and encourages students to use available feedback mechanisms to address problems they might be having. These include an email address for busing matters, ub-buses@buffalo.edu, and the Parking and Transportation phone number, 645-2516. Representatives are available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.
For now, though, it seems that while improvements have been made, students don’t have much choice but to make their concerns heard when necessary and hope that the lingering problems do improve.
That, and they can try to avoid taking classes on South Campus, of course.
