As January temperatures dip into the teens and lower, students are increasingly huddling around the blue and green bus stop signs.
The Capital Area Transportation Authority has made several tweaks to local service as the new year begins.
This semester, it will be a shorter wait for students taking the bus to class from the commuter lot on the south side of campus. The seven-minute break between buses was lowered to five because of increased traffic.
There also are minor time changes to ride schedules on Route 1, between downtown Lansing and the Meridian Mall, and on Route 8, between Holt and Lansing Community College. The changes make the ride timetables match traffic patterns, said Debbie Alexander CATA assistant executive director.
Students squeeze onto buses more often during inclement weather, Alexander said. In October, the average was 272,000 rides each week. In the 2003 fiscal year, the system gave 8.8 million rides.
Pre-veterinary freshman Catie Hock just bought her bus pass a few days ago.
"I can't ride my bike in the snow," she said Tuesday afternoon as she waited for her bus in front of Berkey Hall. She said buses are particularly full at the stops in front of Hubbard, her residence hall.
Alexander said stops in front of student housing, such as Hubbard and Brody halls, and stops near off-campus apartments on Chandler Road are generally the most trafficked. When a bus has to pull away with some riders left behind, backup buses are called in to help.
Tony Silva, a general business administration and pre-law freshman, said he's had to wait for an open bus, and sometimes students are late for class as a result.
But Alexander said if students just head out to stops a few minutes early, they should be fine.
"Buses arrive every seven minutes, so you don't have to wait very long," he said.
CATA also added four larger "articulated" buses to its campus fleet last summer to help with congestion. The new buses hold 63 more riders, 180 total, than normal buses.
There also have been changes to the buses themselves. Fall semester was the first full semester using a magnetic swipe card system. The system replaced late '80s equipment for collecting fares.
Prior to the card swipe system, riders showed a bus pass, or used tokens or change.
"You don't have to be as confrontational (with riders)," said East Lansing resident Aaron Griffin as he drove a bus on Route 33 Tuesday afternoon. He said the change was good because riders couldn't rush on the bus at once. Griffin has been a CATA bus driver for five years.
"It slows things down, so you're not in a rush to do everything," he said.
For more information, visit cata.org.
