New bus joins Stinger routes

By Emily Chambers

Senior Staff Writer

A new Stinger bus was introduced into the fleet last week that should help alleviate some of the congestion that has left students complaining about buses being too full and not running often enough.

The new bus, the tenth in the fleet, will allow the Blue Route to run four buses, one more than it previously used. The increased service will reduce the stress that the new Blue pathway through Cherry Street has placed on the route. The Red Route has been serviced by four buses all year and the Green Route uses two.

"The studies we had last year showed us that the Red Route was really heavily overused, and we discovered that that was because it went into campus, and the Blue Route stayed farther to the outside. So this year we brought the Blue Route in closer through Cherry Street to speed up people coming from West Campus and added the additional bus to that line," said Bob Furniss, director of Parking and Transportation.

The decision to include a tenth bus in the daily traffic was made last spring, before the confirmed purchase of the North Avenue Apartments.

"Including North Avenue into the transportation routes is going to be a challenge. You have so many people, 2000 beds all in one place, many of them sophomores with similar schedules and all wanting to go to class at the same time. So right now it is still going to cause a lot of congestion, but we are looking to see what can be done to alleviate that," said David Williamson, associate director of Transportation.

"When we originally looked into purchasing the new bus we were planning to add it to the red route, which is where our data from last year said all of the congestion was. The North Avenue Apartments broke the routes up that much more though and gave us the option of running the blue line across North Avenue at Luckie Street, so we decided to go with evenly bused routes," Furniss said.

The current Blue Route runs down Ferst Drive, instead of Tech Parkway as it did last year. The Stinger then turns down Cherry Street onto North Avenue and then left onto Luckie Street for eventual access to the North Avenue Apartments.

The new Stinger came into full service last week, despite attempts to have it running at the beginning of the semester. The hours for the bus were requested in April of 2007 to the outside transportation service, First Transit.

Tech does not actually own the individual Stingers, but instead purchases hours of transportation service through First Transit, who provides the required number of buses for those hours. Tech actually has 12 Stingers and eight trolleys in the total fleet, but leaves two of each off-route at all times as reserves in case something should happen to one of the operating buses.

The purchase of the extra hours to operate the tenth Stinger cost $130,000. The funds came from the mandatory student fee, which covers all transportation costs on campus.

The new Stinger comes from a different manufacturer as the previous Stingers, as the previous manufacturer no longer makes buses. The bus is the same size as the other stingers, but it does have a few modifications. The new Stinger has updated air conditioning, an electronic destination sign, stronger tinting on the windows and seats embroidered with the white and gold GT logo.

"We would love for all the vehicles to be embroidered; it just adds that little bit of extra school spirit and pride [and] enhances that collegiate atmosphere," Furniss said.

As for the remaining 11 older Stingers and the eight Trolleys that operate on campus, there are not any immediate plans to replace them.

"When I came in four years ago, the fleet was brand new, but it is getting to be the time where we will start looking at updating the entire fleet. We haven't had any major breakdowns, but we have had a few minor things start to go on the older buses. We would love to get all the buses as updated as the new one, but it isn't something we are working on just yet," Furniss said.