The campus shuttle switches to a new timetable next Monday. The headline change: more departures at the times students actually travel, paid for by cutting the near-empty midday runs. Here is what changes, line by line.
Morning
- First departure moves 15 minutes earlier, to 7:15
- Departures every 10 minutes (previously 15) between 7:45 and 8:45
- The 8:50 “last safe bus” before first period is unchanged — do not test this
Midday
- Departures drop from every 20 minutes to every 30 between 10:00 and 14:00
- Transport office data showed midday buses averaging seven passengers
Afternoon and evening
- Departures every 10 minutes between 15:00 and 16:30
- New 18:30 and 19:30 departures on days the library or sports centre runs late programmes
- Friday’s final departure moves from 18:00 to 19:00
If your usual bus disappeared
The transport office says every cut midday run has a replacement within 15 minutes on either side. If that does not work for a class schedule — for example, a lab that ends exactly when no bus comes — report it through the portal’s transport form. “We adjusted twice last year based on those reports,” said transport coordinator Adam Nowicki. “They get read.”
The full timetable is posted at every stop and in the student portal. The new schedule runs through the end of the school year, with a review at the winter break.
How the timetable was built
The new schedule is the first built from tap-on passenger data rather than driver estimates, after card readers were fitted to the shuttles last year. The data confirmed some folk knowledge — the 8:50 crush is real — and overturned other assumptions: the supposedly busy 13:00 run averaged five passengers, while demand for a post-sports-practice evening bus, long dismissed as marginal, showed up clearly in the numbers of students tapping on at the sports centre after 18:00.
Nowicki said the office will publish ridership figures each term from now on. “The timetable arguments used to be anecdote against anecdote. Now they can be anecdote against data, which is progress of a sort.”
One request the data could not settle survives as this year’s open question: a weekend service for students using the library and sports centre on Saturdays. The transport office says current demand estimates sit just below viability, and has left the door open — Saturday tap-on numbers at the nearest public stop will be reviewed at the winter break.
