Rutgers does not plan to replace shelter at Scott Hall bus stop

February 13, 2017 8:24pm | By Nikhilesh De

Photo by Jeffrey Gomez | The Daily Targum University administrators do not plan to reimplement the bus shelters at Scott Hall. The Director of Transportation said they are currently working to fix service for the arrival boards at the stop.

Rutgers University does not plan to reinstall the bus shelter which used to stand at the Scott Hall bus stop.

The school only has bus shelters at stops which are exposed to the elements with no other options available, said Executive Vice President of Strategic Planning and Operations Antonio Calcado. Scott Hall is not the only bus stop which does not have a shelter.

“For example, on Livingston, we have one at the corner of Rockafeller and Joyce Kilmer, but not in front of the Student Center,” he said in an email. “The Yard has multiple options for refuge if needed. Bus arrival and departure times can be monitored through phone apps or the board system.”

The Yard @ College Ave. is home to several restaurants, as well as a common area in the apartment building near the back of the facility.

Students should probably not wait inside the dining facilities at the Yard, said School of Environmental and Biological Sciences junior Alyssa Norman. She works at a restaurant, and her employer would not allow students to wait inside if they were not ordering food.

Glenn Arnold, the manager of Bella’s Burger Shack, said he would not mind if students had to wait without ordering, so long as they did not make a mess or disrupt operations.

“They can smell the food — hopefully they’ll order next time (they visit),” he said.

Having a shelter would be a better solution than asking students to wait inside one of the restaurants, said Luigi Camilli. The School of Arts and Sciences junior would like to see the old facility at Scott Hall return.

The shelters especially help during windy or rainy days, said School of Arts and Sciences sophomore Priyanka Patel.

“(A shelter) doesn’t cover that many people, but if it’s raining or (windy), it covers (them). A lot of students don’t carry umbrellas so it would help,” Norman said.

The arrival boards, which normally indicate when the next bus will arrive, are not presently operational. This is because AT&T — which provided the 2G service needed to run the boards — no longer offers 2G service, said Jack Molenaar, senior director of the Department of Transportation Services.

The signs were first introduced to the campus in 2006, but will now need to be switched out for new versions which can use 4G service, he said in an email.

“We are in the process of getting a quote to switch out the components for a 4G system,” he said. “Step one was to switch over all the campus buses’ Global Positioning Units so that all riders could still track the buses online and on their smartphone apps.”

Every bus on campus has been running with the new system since the beginning of the Spring 2017 semester, he said.

“We prioritized this over the signs since not every stop has a sign but everyone can use the app and see the system online,” Molenaar said. “The next step, which we are working on now, is to replace the components in the signs so that they can receive the 4G signals. Our plan is to have the signs working again within the next two months.”

Nikhilesh De is a correspondent for The Daily Targum. He is a School of Arts and Sciences senior. Follow him on Twitter @nikhileshde for more.

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