BUS BLUES

Sudden Tiger Trails route changes cause panic and confusion

BY COLIN FALCON @nestingnests

Carlos Reina-Flores, a 30-yearold studying pre-cardiopulmonary science, can’t legally drive a car because of a traumatic brain injury. He also can’t safely walk or bike to campus.

That means a sudden decision by LSU Parking and Transportation Services to cut the bus route that stops by his home left him in a lurch.

He moved from Honduras and lives with his grandma. Tiger Trails, LSU’s bus system, stopping close to his home made coming to LSU possible.

“If I knew this before, one of two things would’ve happened,” Reina-Flores said. “I wouldn’t have come to LSU, or I would’ve looked for a different place and restructured my life.”

But Reina-Flores and other students caught off guard by the cancellation of the Garden District bus route found relief shortly before the start of the fall semester. On Friday afternoon, Parking and Transportation Services announced it would restore the bus route starting Monday, the first day of classes, until the end of the fall semester—with some modifications.

Service will run 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. with pick-up and drop-off every 50 to 60 minutes, depending on traffic, the email said. Riders can see real-time updates on the bus’ location through the Transloc app.

Parking and Transportation acknowledged in its Friday email that its decision left some riders without much time to plan.

“Parking and Transportation Services understands that our communications about the cancellation of the Garden District Route may have not made it to you,” the email read. “Additionally, we understand there is a need for more time to plan for this disruption in each of your lives.”

It’s the second time in recent weeks the university has reversed its decision to terminate routes after complaints from students.

Brian Favela, the director of Parking and Transportation Services, said routes were modified or removed because they were “underutilized.” According to him, the low ridership created too high of a cost disparity, with the passenger cost per trip on the Garden District route being 1.9 times the average of the rest of the routes.

Regardless of the ridership, many along the route find the bus essential. And though it’s been restored for a few more months, its abrupt termination shocked some riders.

Spenser Biernacki, a 29-yearold biology doctoral student who lives in the Garden District, was heading to campus in mid-July and opened the TransLoc app to check the bus’ status, only to be greeted by a notification claiming the route would be shut down on Aug. 11. Biernacki said she then got on the bus, where a small flier with the same warning was posted on the vehicle’s interior.

Biernacki was especially confused by the cancellation because of a conversation she had with Parking and Transportation months prior. Biernacki said she heard a rumor about the Garden District route being canceled from a bus driver in October 2022 and immediately emailed Parking and Transportation to confirm if it was true.

The next day, the director of Parking and Transportation, Favela, responded with an adamant denial of the rumor. He also claimed that if that decision was ever made, Parking and Transportation would be the ones to notify people.

“PTS is committed to communicating any planned changes in a timely manner, and if any changes were to occur, those communications will come directly from my office,” Favela said.

Biernacki said Favela’s reassurance from months earlier made Parking and Transportation’s handling of the situation even more disheartening.

“It just seems like they don’t care,” Biernacki said.

After finding out about the route termination, Biernacki reached out to as many fellow grad students and Garden District residents as possible to make sure people knew about the change. For Samantha Rutledge, a 24-yearold graduate student working as the curator of birds for the LSU Natural Science Museum, this was how she learned the news.

“There was a small flier on the bus. I didn’t really read it in full because I was just kind of like, it’s just background info,” said Rutledge. “But other than that, there wasn’t any announcement that I saw. It was just kind of put there on the bus by itself, and if you saw, it you saw it.”

Rutledge said the flier and app notification were insufficient means to warn the Garden District community and speculated that there are many people who only found out about the closure when the bus stopped coming.

Rutledge feels far more warning should have been provided, because the lack of bus transportation is a significant problem for many people in the Garden District. She said owning a car is nearly impossible for her and many other grad students because of the low university salary they receive. Without the bus, Rutledge said she will have to take a 15-to-20-minute bike ride to campus every day.

“It’s a problem on days where there’s bad weather, or if you’re too sick to do that,” Rutledge said about the issue of relying on a bike.

Other routes brought back from the dead

The Garden District wasn’t the only route the university recently killed and then revived. The Tigerland A and B routes were removed at the beginning of the summer semester and reintroduced on Aug. 14, a week before classes began, as the NicholsonRiver Road A and B routes.

According to Favela, the new route will “connect Tigerland residents with the campus through the Nicholson Gateway Community and into the core of campus on North Stadium Drive.”

As with the Garden District cancellation, some riders felt they were given little to no notice about the change.

“One day I came to the bus stop, but I waited for like 20 minutes. I thought there was a problem with my network or my phone,” Mohsena Lopa, a 30-yearold engineering science doctoral student living in Tigerland, told the Reveille in July about the day she learned the routes were no longer in service. “If you are starting service or stopping service, there should be some head’s up.”

Lopa came to LSU from Bangladesh in spring 2023. Like many other international students living in Tigerland, Lopa said she doesn’t have a car due to practicality and cost issues. Without many other options and classes that still needed attending, she began walking to campus in the summer heat.

Lopa walked to her office in the Alex Box stadium almost every weekday without the bus. She said one trip took 50 minutes at minimum. She usually stayed at her office for eight to ten hours at a time, so she walked with three bags containing her laptop, food and other essentials. Additionally, the intense summer heat, which usually sits comfortably in the 90’s, and occasional storms often made the trek far more difficult, she said.

“There’s no shade on the walk, so you can’t even wait anywhere when it’s raining,” Lopa said. “It’s too hard.”

“I thought that it would be easy for me to use the Tigerland bus to help find out where buildings are and get to campus. But suddenly I noticed the buses stopped,” 25-year-old Faud Hasan said.

After only living in the U.S. for a couple of months, Hasan used the bus routes to plan his living situation for the school year. Hasan is a Bangladeshi engineering student studying for his doctorate, and this summer was his first semester at LSU.

The updated routes will run Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and make the following stops, according to Parking and Transportation:

Nicholson-River Road A

1. South Gate Outbound

2. Nicholson-Bob Pettit

3. Oakbrook (Outbound)

4. Campus Crossing

5. Varn Villa

6. Blox

7. Brightside View

8. Park & Geaux Hub

9. North Stadium Drive (New stop)

Nicholson-River Road B

1. Brightside View

2. Blox

3. Varn Villa

4. Campus Crossing

5. Oakbrook (Inbound)

6. Nicholson-Jennifer Jean

7. South Gate Inbound

8. North Stadium Drive (New stop)

9. Park & Geaux

Students can submit complaints to Parking and Transportation through an online form. They can also contact the Reveille about transportation issues at editor@lsu.edu or through the anonymous tip form at LSUReveille.com.

Claire Sullivan contributed reporting to this story.

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