The unreliability and inconsistency of the Clemson Area Transit (CAT) bus system are increasingly causing difficulties for Clemson students and residents who depend on public transportation to perform daily tasks, such as going to and from work, school, home and around town.
CATbus student riders find themselves either arriving late to class or missing classes completely due to many factors, including the erratic nature of the TransLoc mobile app, buses being full and unable to take additional riders and buses arriving delayed or at times that differ from the schedule on the CATbus website.
“The main thing for me is that you can never rely on it being at our stop at a certain time, and the app just won’t display the buses sometimes. This makes it so that we frankly have no clue when the bus will show up.
“I leave my apartment 30-40 minutes before my classes begin to try and make sure I catch a bus, but sometimes the buses will pass us because they’re too full or the driver is on break,” a student at Clemson University told The Tiger in an interview.
The mobile app TransLoc, which bus users depend on to track the location of their bus, updates minutely based on bus location. However, the app changes drastically from second to second.
TransLoc might display that a bus is 15 minutes away one moment, then could change to 38 minutes, and then the bus shows up at the location the next moment. This inconsistency makes it difficult for users to know when to arrive at bus stops in preparation for the buses’ arrival.
“I’ve been late to class before because a bus was reported as active on the app but it was actually inactive on the route,” a sophomore student at the University told The Tiger in an interview. “My main suggestion to CATbus would be to optimize their app and tracking system so it is reliable and accurate.”
Another issue is that people are simply left behind when buses are fully occupied. There is no accommodation or solution when a bus cannot take more riders.
In fact, I missed a midterm in my 9:05 a.m. political science class due to this exact instance: The Red Route bus couldn’t take me, as it was at 100% occupancy. The next bus did not arrive for 40 minutes even though the CATbus website states that the Red Route provides services from 7-11 a.m. every 15 minutes.
“I have certainly had students over the years tell me they were late to class due to full or delayed buses or shuttles,” a lecturer at the University told The Tiger in an email.
It is safe to say that students, residents and professors are desperate for improvements to the CATbus transportation system for the good of their education, career and everyday tasks.
Kat Pugh is a sophomore English major with a minor in political science from San Francisco, California. Kat can be reached at [email protected].
