New buses for the New Year
Featured image by Katherine Rountree
Written by Ysabel Cacho
Bus images from Jeff Davis
It may only be the second week of 2015, but SCAD can already cross off one of its New Year’s resolutions: new buses for the students, which were deployed on Jan. 2.
The new buses are bigger and cleaner and “they’re [also] smoother,” said Stefanie Gomez, a fourth-year advertising student from Puerto Rico. When she takes the bus to class, she no longer hears the rattle of the engine or other parts of the bus that sound as though they might break down soon.
For Jeff Davis, the director of transportation and parking, this was an 18-month project.
“When I took over in fall of 2013, my biggest gripe was that the old fleet [of buses] were old and unserviceable and just hideous,” he said. “Some of the buses were 12 to 13 years old and they were designed to run for only seven years.”
Many students took notice of “the old Frankenstein fleet” and would plague Davis with angry e-mails. One student even snapped a photo of a mushroom growing on the floor of one of the buses and posted it on Facebook — an “embarrassing and hilarious” moment for Davis.
The school signed a contract with First Transit, which now owns and operates the new fleet. In the past, SCAD owned the buses and were responsible for registering and maintaining each of them. Now, Davis said, “First Transit is responsible for maintaining the buses to our standards and if anything happens to them, it’s written in the contract that they will be replaced.”
First Transit provided 37 EZ Riders — the bigger buses — and 15 coaches, eight of which operate in Atlanta. “Both of these buses are slated to run for the next 12 years,” added Davis.
The new buses were custom built in Riverside, California. Davis actually went to the office with his mechanics and designed the buses from the ground up to suit the school’s needs.
The entire SCAD transportation was completely wiped away and was replaced by brand-new vehicles and technology, which “kind of works in the back end that the students never see.”
One of the latest features is the safety drive cameras installed on the buses. If there were ever an accident, Davis would be able to see what the driver was doing and how the conditions of the road were from his office.
“There are [also] sensors on every single bus that will alert me if, say, a driver is driving down MLK and starts to drive over 35 miles per hour. I’m aware of that. There’s a system on my computer that will pop up a dispatch,” he added.
The buses’ Wi-Fi hotspots have yet to be installed but with this newest addition, students will be able to go online “and do whatever it is they need to do” during travel time.
There are also video monitors in the buses that display art from both current and alumni SCAD students.
Students no longer have to worry about trying to figure out which bus goes where. There are digital signboards on the nose and side of the bus displaying the route. The signs will also tell them when the bus is out of service. If that wasn’t enough, there is also a vocal enunciation system that announces the next stop so students won’t have to constantly guess or pester other students.
The most obvious difference is the size of the buses. Some of the buses are too big to go into smaller areas such as Boundary Village, which forces students to wait outside the complex. Although the buses are bigger, “there are very little seating spots,” said Gomez. This means the majority of the students will be standing up throughout the ride. “On the bright side, you won’t miss your stop because you fell asleep,” Gomez added.
“The size of the buses didn’t change the route physically but it definitely changed the amount of buses on each route,” said Davis. There are now eight vehicles that are just standing by, empty. That way, “if we get a sense that there is going to be heavy day due to the weather or an event that’s happening in the building, we can put more buses on the route.”
Another noticeable difference is the bare exteriors of the buses. Davis plans on adding artwork for the spring quarter. His initial idea was to brand the transportation with one piece of art for all the buses. He explained this would make it easier for locals and tourists to identify a SCAD bus.
President Wallace, on the other hand, decided each bus should have a different work of art just like before. Davis hopes the president and her team will choose the new artwork from both current students and alumni before the spring.
However, the biggest difference Davis is most excited about is the green initiative.
“It’s the same quality air that leaves the vehicle that is in the surrounding air,” Davis said. The air goes through a three-stage filtration system that takes out all of the heavy metal and toxins before it goes out of the exhaust pipe. “To put it in lay man’s terms, it would take 50 of the new buses to put out the same fumes that one of our old buses did,” he explained.
“There’s [even] a chemical in it that can tell when a filtration system has reached its breaking point,” he added. “The smoke will actually turn a different color so that we can automatically see it and check the filter.”
The new filtration system not only benefits the environment but also the students who use their bikes to get around. “You don’t want to be riding behind a bus that’s spewing black smoke and fire at you,” said Davis.
He gets complaints from time to time, but he understands that “you can’t please 100 percent of the people 100 percent of the time,” he said. “But this is a huge step forward. It was way overdue.”
