The Clairmont Residence Hall Association (RHA) will begin a trial run that modifies the C-Toco Hills bus route this Saturday.
The new route will stop at Clairmont Campus, Woodruff Circle and Kroger in Toco Hills, and back to Clairmont every 25 minutes on weekends. It will also stop at the Woodruff Residential Center.
The current C-Toco Hills route has two buses from Clairmont campus – one on the hour and the other 15 minutes after.
Clairmont RHA representative and College senior Catherine Levey emphasized that the new route will not be picking students up at Eagle Row – a change from the current route.
In September, RHA held an opening advocacy event to gather student suggestions. At the event, the top complaint was a need for more weekend trips to campus, Levey said.
RHA then released a physical survey in December asking students choose from three options: no change, departure time change or a new route. Eighty percent of Clairmont students selected the new route, Levey said.
She added that RHA then approached the Office of Parking and Transportation about a lack of transportation options from Clairmont to campus on the weekends, and together they developed this solution.
“This proposal was successful due to the assistance of the [Office of Parking and Transportation]’s investigation into efficient possible routes and their availability,” College junior and Clairmont RHA member Sam Bobo said.
According to Levey, a month-long trial period will allow the students to adjust to the new schedule. RHA will be releasing another survey at the end of March to obtain student feedback, but students may give feedback at any time to Clairmont RHA members, Levey said.
“I’m excited that we’re trying something new, because upperclassmen students have been dissatisfied with the old C-Toco Hills [route] for a long time,” Levey wrote in an email to the Wheel. “And personally, I’m really glad I won’t have to wait an entire hour at Kroger now. That is way too long for a trip to the grocery store.”
Bobo said the change could benefit the student community because the waiting time and excessive planning will decrease and Woodruff Residential Center and Clifton Tower Apartments residents will gain an additional stop.
College sophomore Ana Colon said she has had an issue with the weekend bus schedule for a while, noting that she could not fully depend on the bus’s timeliness.
“I think [this] is a great idea,” she wrote in an email to the Wheel. “I would definitely take advantage of it, and I can’t think of any reason why they shouldn’t continue the trial for a longer period of time.”
Colon said the current bus schedule is especially frustrating because of weekend organization meetings she has to attend. On the whole, however, Colon said she hopes RHA continues to update students throughout this process to avoid worsening the situation.
Students can use the Shuttle Tracker application called TransLoc on smartphones to view the real-world location of the shuttles. The departure times for the new route can also be found on the Emory Cliff Shuttles website.
–By Karishma Mehrotra
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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