Don't Bitch: Bus

Before I broke my knee, I tended to walk to school from my 54th and Kimbark Apartment.

Occasionally, when the weather was bad, I'd instead walk north to 53rd and Woodlawn to wait for the 172. Of the four or five times I tried this, almost without fail the bus was full of people coming from further up the route and I couldn't get on. I was obviously angry and was subsequently late to whatever I was trying to get to. Damn CTA and damn Transportation Office, I'd say to myself.

A lot of people are mad at the buses: from Shorelanders trying to get to and from campus to professional students who rely on the buses to get to the El to get downtown. But fortunately, unlike many other things at the University, there is someone listening.

The Transportation Office is standing by with a helpful comment form, an e-mail address which is checked daily, and a hotline for complaints ( 773-795-6108). This is a department which wants to hear from you and is willing to make service adjustments to fill needs. They just need to know where the holes in the system exist.

For me, this is a paradigm of what the University services should be like. It should be relatively flexible and need oriented. It should be receptive to student input and ready to respond. But it needs one final component and that's us: it needs us to use the structure they've built to handle our complaints.

So next time you miss a bus because its too crowded, don't just curse and walk/jog to class: BUS. Every time a driver is rude, don't just brush it off: CALL. And anytime the drunk van takes an hour and a half to pick you up: E-MAIL. Be as specific as possible: time, date, route, and driver if you can remember it all. Channel your anger into that complaint and the Transportation Office will use your advise to make a service which can better serve all students.

-Scott

PS - There are a lot of things wrong with the Transportation Office and there's a lot that needs to be fixed (see Drunk Van, 173, 171 at times, and I still have no idea whether I can get on the 172 at 11 AM on a Tuesday). But their model for communication, albeit under publicized and under used, is what we should strive for and what we would work for if elected.