Morgan Starnes (25C) reached Woodruff Circle at 4 p.m., half an hour before Emory University’s “Gateway to Atlanta” shuttle was due to arrive to take her to Six Flags’ “Fright Fest” on Oct. 31. Around 40 minutes later, there was still no shuttle in sight. Starnes, who hoped to reach the park by 5 p.m., found her plans disrupted because of the delay.
The Gateway to Atlanta program is organized by Dooley After Dark, a Student Involvement, Leadership & Transitions office (SILT) programming series that takes students to events and sites around Atlanta.
Throughout the fall semester, some students have complained about unclear pick-up and drop-off locations and stressful delays on these shuttles and SILT’s other programming series Experience shuttles.
Fright Fest had been a highly anticipated event for many, with students forming long lines at the Emory Student Center (ESC) to get the free tickets. Starnes said that there were not enough seats for everyone and many students had to sit on the floor of the aisle. Due to traffic, students spent two and a half hours on the bus.
“I felt really bad for the people who were sitting on the floor, especially because, to their knowledge, they were going to have seats there and back from the park,” Starnes said.
Starnes said that to avoid waiting at Six Flags late at night and to ensure that she had a seat on the shuttle, she left the park at 9:30 p.m. — an hour earlier than planned. By 10 p.m., the returning shuttle had still not left the parking lot, leading her to consider taking an Uber.
“They just drop you off, and you have no idea if they’re going to come back to get you, where they’re going to come, if there’s going to be seats for everyone,” Starnes said. “It was a really stressful experience.”
Starnes noted that the buses were not tracked on Transloc, an app students can use to track the location of buses in the Emory shuttle system. Besides specifying the timings of the shuttle, students did not receive other communication from SILT, such as the pick-up locations of the shuttles.
According to a Dec. 9 email from Assistant Director of the Transportation Services Walter Kolis, Transportation and Parking Services was not contracted to provide a bus service to Fright Fest, so the buses used for Fright Fest were not tracked on the Transloc app.
However, Kolis cited unexpected road closures, traffic and scheduling operators as reasons for the delays students experienced earlier in the semester in an Oct. 19 email to the Wheel.
Kolis said that in response to feedback from CC, Transportation Services will add turn-by-turn maps that “more clearly” identify the Emory Experience shuttle in the TransLoc app and plan to publish scheduled departure times “when appropriate.”
The College Council (CC) announced their Experience shuttle program for the fall 2021 semester on Sept. 30, which organizes shuttles to take students to events and places in Atlanta. Past locations this semester included the Atlanta Jazz Festival on Sept. 5, Music Midtown on Sept. 18 and 19, Fall Festival on Ponce on Oct. 9 and 10 and Little Five Points Halloween Festival on Oct. 16 and 17.
Students again reported difficulty with tracking their pick-up and drop-off locations.
First-years new to the city said they rely on the prospect of a safe means of transport. Students noted that these shuttle inconsistencies have left them in situations they did not account for.
Allison Silas (25C) and her friends left Music Midtown early to locate the shuttles, and went to the same corner where they had been dropped off, where they saw a large group of Emory students waiting.
After waiting for about 30 minutes, Silas emailed one of the contacts listed on the email about the event, and received a reply from a representative from CC with a location that was a mile away from where they had been dropped off. Not wanting to walk the mile to that location, Silas said she and her friends paid $35 to Uber back to campus.
“I found it frustrating that it wasn’t communicated to us where the pick-up and drop-off locations were going to be,” Silas said. “I felt like that shouldn’t have been something I needed to ask for.”
Silas added that the shuttle did not arrive at Woodruff Circle the next morning for the second day of Music Midtown. The shuttles also did not show for the Little Five Points Festival, which she attended the following weekend.
Experience shuttle program Chief-of-Staff Honna Li (20Ox, 22C) said that after Music Midtown, they received a lot of messages from students who were unsure of the pick-up and drop-off locations, and the timings of the shuttles. She added that the information was not consistent among their platforms, and TransLoc has not been functional.
“Transportation needs to be made aware that College Council is not funding shuttles that just show up and don’t take students where they need to be,” Li said. “The pick-up and drop-off locations were not supposed to be different. That weekend, we fully compensated all of our students for their Lyft or Uber rides if they were able to provide a receipt.”
Greta Franke (25C) said that she waited for the shuttle heading to the Fall Festival on Ponce for 30 minutes. She was able to track it through the TransLoc app and after boarding confirmed with the bus driver that it was an Emory Experience shuttle.
However, the shuttle incorrectly dropped students off at Monday Night Brewing Atlanta, a brewery miles south of the festival, a nearly 30-minute drive away.
She added that while she would have felt comfortable taking the Emory Experience shuttle to Ponce by herself, she would have been uncomfortable being dropped to the unfamiliar brewery if she were alone.
They were informed by the bus driver that the shuttle would not return to campus. According to Franke, their map suddenly switched to showing it as the regular shuttle, while it had read as the Emory Experience shuttle for the entire ride.
“My friend emailed Emory Transportation, and they said that we probably got on the wrong shuttle,” Franke said. “But, TransLoc clearly showed that it was the right one. If it was the wrong one, then there was no Emory Experience shuttle running at all that day.”
Li said that the Transportation Services had seen recent staffing changes, replacing their original point of contact they’d been in communication with over the summer. She said that the new staff and staffing absences caused communication problems that resulted in delays.
“We are fully aware of these inconveniences and understand their frustrations,” Li said. “Now we’re taking steps to ensure that our students feel like they’re informed and at ease about their transportation needs to events across Atlanta, especially considering how big of a city it is.”
Update (12/9/2021 at 10:52 p.m.): A statement from Kolis was added indicating that Transportation and Parking Services was not contracted to provide a bus service to Fright Fest, so the buses used for the event were not tracked on the Transloc app.
