Rutgers Transportation Up to Par?

Transportation at Rutgers University is an issue that needs to be addressed. The bus system has many issues regarding faculty and students; the spacing, the tracking system, the safety all of these come into mind when we think about Rutgers transportation. To compare schools I looked into other Universities in New Jersey, Rugters Newark, Riders, Ramapo, Princeton, Kean, Montcliar, and Fairleigh Dickinson to get better understanding of how bus systems work through various colleges of New Jersey. Rutgers bus system needs improvement, thus looking into other colleges to see what other Universities are doing to provide a 10/10 bus system for their students can help give us ideas on what alternative solutions we can use.

Rutgers New Brunswick and Newark, and Montclair are the only universities that use Nextbus. Nextbus is live tracking system to let students know where the buses are located in real time. Princeton uses “TigerTracker”, which is provided by Transloc. The rest of the universities have a partnership with New Jersey Transit, where students can get a partnership deal with them. This way students pay less for tickets where as normal customers have to pay general admissions.

Aside from Rutgers New Brunswick, Newark, Princeton, and Montclair, Rider University has their own buses also. The only difference is the time scheduling; Rider uses a set time schedule like New Jersey transit rather than a real time tracking system.

It is hard to say which system is better: set time schedule or real time system. We do know that Rutgers University which uses Next bus, has flaws, the buses never arrive on time. The bus drivers take breaks in intervals thus the bus is idol for sometimes 20 minutes at a campus center, also the bus drivers will delay the bus for late students, but at the same time they would leave the students; bus drivers pick and choose who they want to let on the bus.

 

A Step Forward

With the research accumulated the next step would be to look into which system would be better. The New Jersey transit set time style or the Next bus real time schedule. A formal versus a informal style, each has their own positives and negatives but which one’s positives outweigh the negatives.

In addition we can also look into the cost of transportation at these different schools. Is having a partnership deal with NJ Transit better than Rutgers bus schedules. One thing to look into before this is the transportation cost at Rutgers because Rutgers does not specify how much transportation cost, it could be included into the term bill somewhere but it would be beneficial to look into the cost to determine which option is more beneficial in terms of time and money.