NC State’s Department of Transportation has officially signed a contract with Transdev services, incorporating changes to the transportation system on campus. New buses and different routes are also part of the contract.
The contract has been set up to provide students with new buses that are 40 feet long, hold 28 percent more students and have wider doors.
Christine Klein, the public communication specialist in the NC State Department of Transportation says that the new buses should make it easier for students to get around, though it can’t ever be perfect.
“We’re getting new 40-foot buses and it’s a different kind of bus,” Klein said. “Right now we have a compilation of buses that’s mainly 40-footers, some 35-footers, we had some 30-footers.”
The operator for the current transit system is First Transit, but now that their 10-year contract with NC State is over, the university signed Transdev services for a new 10-year contract. Transdev services is the vendor that runs the transportation system in Raleigh.
William Flanary, the assistant director for finance in the Department of Transportation, says that the transit fees will probably go up to $12 from the current $8 fee.
“Student fees cover about 80 percent and the rest comes from parking revenue, we have always tried to keep an 80-20 split so student fees have never covered the full amount,” Flanary said. “We also have an ongoing grant from the City of Raleigh that we get to help support that transit as well.”
The expected cost next year for the transit system is about $6.6 million, according to Flanary. The $12 transit fee has already been approved by student government and is currently pending approval from the UNC Board of Governors.
Some bus routes will be changed or receive a new bus, which will have a better turning radius than the old ones. Catherine Reeve, the director of the Department of Transportation, says that the department uses the data it receives to know what changes need to be made.
“We have the hard data, every month we have the ridership data we look at, and TransLoc gives us the data about loads and on time performance, so we evaluate those, all that information we have and we can share,” Reeve said.
Flanary explained that student concerns about overcrowding on buses is what caused the department to make the decision to buy bigger buses.
“I think that the bigger buses is to the students concerns about overcrowding the buses,” Flanary said. “I think that’s why we went this route with the bigger buses because we thought this could help with the overcrowding, we also tried adding more buses to help alleviate that.”
The new buses are also said to have new exterior design although the final idea for this design has not been decided yet. The new design will definitely be easily noticeable as a Wolfline bus, according to Flanary.
The new buses will not be running on campus until next fall. However, the new routes may be put into effect before the upcoming academic year.
