It’s a three-day holiday on campus. You may be a new student that wants to see the sights of Raleigh. You may have a class project that requires you to get around the edges of campus. You may be a first-year student without transportation. Maybe you are a student trying save money on transportation or helping reduce your carbon footprint. Out of all of this, you never saw a bus. This is what exactly happened during the MLK break. While other city busses were running with limited operations, N.C. State Wolfline busses were not running at all.
However, the following week busses, according to students, appeared in short supply or were untraceable on the Wolfline website. In the meantime student fees increased to help cover additional bus routes and better technology with disputable results. Students have voiced that there seems to be fewer busses running after 5 p.m., even when evening classes are in session. The signage at Wolfline stops tells a different story, because while bus schedules say one thing, the website shares a contrasting story.
Some early morning bus routes are still encountering overcrowding. A few freshmen students have already dropped early morning classes because busses are full causing those students on particular routes to be late by 20 minutes or more. This is not because students are lazy. It’s because they have no transportation alternatives.
Evening routes pose the same issue. Evening students feel that Transportation is not meeting their needs either. This is not an issue of walking to class. These are students that pay the same student fees as everyone else. They deserve a solution, or refund students a portion of their transportation student fees to offset inconveniences.
Wolfline management should be an active participant in observing what students and visitors go through. However, those that manage Wolfline appear to observe from a desk instead of being visible to the student population. They should be gathering valuable ideas, input and perhaps remedies to repeated situations. Raleigh city transit supervisors are very visible on routes. Wolfline management should learn lessons from this approach.
Wolfline may be improving, but its management needs to be actively visible in improvement measures. Wolfline is a contracted company — not a University owned business. Its business should be competing to be the best to retain that contract. This means running on limited schedules during holidays when a majority of students are still on campus. Together Wolfline management and the campus community can make the Wolfline work and benefit the community.