Sunday, April 11, 2010

Improvement of the CAT bus system at Clemson University
Brent Lewis
Tristan Williams
Lashonda Douglas
Arun Sathyanathan

Purpose
The purpose of this proposal is to recommend to the Clemson Area Transit System to increase the number of buses for their on campus routes. If the Clemson Area Transit Systems were to increase the amount of buses that are in circulation throughout the day they would be able to accommodate the large amount of students who us their service.

Introduction
The Clemson Area Transit System or CAT bus is a free transit system that is available to students, faculty members, and local area residents. The CAT bus has various routes, but the most popular route is the Tiger East and Tiger West route or simply the Tiger route. These two routes are used for on campus transportation and are utilized mostly by commuting students. According to the Clemson Area Transit website, the tiger route runs Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. and runs in increments of eight minutes.
Many students who use the CAT bus on a regular basis complain that their number issue with the CAT bus is overcrowding or not being able to get onto the bus. An online review site recently ranked Clemson transit system as a C+. The number one complaint that earned Clemson a C+ was the inconvenience of the CAT bus around class times.

Problem
The most popular times for students to arrive on campus to begin classes are 9:00 a.m. until noon. As a Clemson University student, who is a commuter, you are required to park in designated commuter parking lots. Most of the commuter parking lots are far from academic buildings and many students utilize the CAT bus as a means to get to class. Many students will usually give themselves at least thirty minutes before class to park, catch the CAT bus, and to arrive to class on time. The main problems that many students express in regard to the CAT bus are crowded buses or not being able to get onto the bus because it is filled to capacity.
The Tiger East bus, which serves the eastside of campus, has been expressed by many students as the route that does not accommodate for its large volume of students. Kite Hill, which is one of the largest parking lots on campus, is the last major stop on the tiger east route before its stops at academic buildings. Many students are presented with a bus that is crowded and causes them to be on top of one another. Other students who may have been waiting for fifteen minutes for
the bus may not be able to get onto the bus because once it arrives at their stop it is full. If students are to miss the bus due to not being able to get on they are forced to wait for another eight minutes and run the risk of being late to class. With these problems there have been many suggestions to improve the transit system at Clemson.

Methodology/Research Design
Our research for this project will consist of using past research on parking/transit patterns on our campus as well as other similar size campuses throughout the country. These sources of research will provide the information necessary to determine what the scope of the problem is and how to go about improving it. Another source would be to survey students/employees on campus to see what they would propose to fix about our transit system if they were given a few select choices. This will give us valuable insight as to whether our proposed solutions will be received with a positive or negative attitude.
The overcrowding on the Clemson Area Transit system has become a real problem for students and employees alike on campus. There are a number of solutions that have been proposed to alleviate the situation and the purpose here is to suggest some different methods of trying to achieve this purpose. One of the solutions we are suggesting is to have a smaller time interval in between stops. Our current system on the Tiger East/West routes have eight minute intervals during peak hours, it is a real problem due to overcrowding. Our suggestion includes having a six minute or fewer intervals between buses in order to increase the number of stops the bus makes at a particular location during peak class hours.
Another suggestion we propose to improve the transit system is to increase the number of off-campus buses. This would help to alleviate the overcrowding that occurs at off campus stops by giving residents different buses to choose from. This would also decrease the car traffic on campus because it might inspire people to ride the bus more often if they know they won’t be late just because they missed one bus. These changes have been implemented in our Red route and have shown dramatic improvements in helping get people to and from campus without many people missing their spot on the bus.
The transit system at the University of Georgia is a great example of how incorporating more buses into the system and decreasing intervals between stops helps to make the system run faster and more efficiently. With the implementation of these changes, there have been great improvements in other schools’ transit systems. Our proposal is to implement more buses to allow for shorter intervals between stops during the hours where students feel they miss the bus due to overcrowding. The way to approach this would be to survey people both on and off campus who use and don’t use the CAT bus system to get an overall idea about what improvements should be made to make the system run better. These surveys coupled with the research and reports of similar campus transit systems should result in enough research to make this project go forward.

Cost
The main concern that many people have with changing the transit system at Clemson is how to go about paying for the changes. Clemson students pay around $30.00 a semester to use the CAT bus. To improve the CAT bus system students would probably have to expect an increase in their tuition. Another way to pay for an increase in buses would be to charge non-Clemson students who use the CAT bus. The CAT buses runs to local towns such as Pendleton, Anderson and Seneca and are free to their residents. If there was a small fee for non-Clemson students to ride the CAT bus the revenue could be used towards providing more buses and also employing the employers who could drive the extra buses. If there was an implement of increase fees for the CAT bus service we could possible see better routes that accommodate all people.

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