Limited hours, reliability problems give Gus Bus riders grief

By Leticia Juang

PITTSBURG — Gabriel de Andrade is a master’s student of engineering technology at Pittsburg State University. Since he works as a graduate teaching assistant at the fluids and mechanics laboratory and is majoring in manufacturing, he spends most of his days at the Crossland Technology Center. He lives close to the main campus, so he walks to all of his classes, which are held at the center, Student Campus Recreation Center and McCray Hall. 

As an option for students to get around the different buildings and facilities on campus, Pitt State offers the free Gus Bus service, which can be tracked online. The bus operates Monday through Friday from 7:45 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. throughout the school semester and it circles the campus amongst five stops going from the Rec Center, then to the technology center, a stop behind Axe Library, Lindburg Plaza, and lastly Nation Hall before repeating the loop. The bus saves the students from walking more than 20 minutes everyday between locations like Axe Library and Rec Center.

However, the Gus Bus is not a helpful option for Andrade given the fact that his classes take place in Crossland Technology Center between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m.

The Gus Bus helps “most of the undergrad students,” he said. “But for the ones that come here to do masters, our classes [happen in a different time, later in the day]. Since my first semester here, [in] all my classes, I was [in class] at least from 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. or even 9 p.m. So for us [graduate students], [we] don’t have transportation for us. At least not with the Gus Bus.”

Andrade also noted that the Gus Bus is not reliable transportation. He said that the tracker doesn’t work properly and there’s no way to contact the bus, so he might have to wait at the bus stop for five minutes or 20 minutes.

“After all this stress, I just said ‘Hey, I’m just gonna walk,’” he said. “I redo my schedule to exactly accommodate this walking distance between my house and tech center or rec center.”

Andrade is not the only one that can’t rely on Gus Bus. Other students who use the service aren’t happy with the reality they have been facing lately. 

Marina Biasus is a 20-year-old senior at Pitt State who takes the Gus Bus three times a week to use Campus Recreation Center’s facilities.

She said she does not enjoy the experience. 

“It doesn’t work,” she said, “because we don’t know where [it] is at, what time [it] is gonna arrive, if it is working or not. We just have to hope [it] is working and hope it’s gonna get there before we give up on waiting.”

Another issue that Biasus had faced recently is that, because of the current construction in front of Lindburg Plaza, the Gus Bus route had changed—but she didn’t know how. She found herself waiting in front of Nation Hall not knowing if the bus would even stop there.

Santiago Morel is a graduate student at Pitt State who often uses the Gus Bus service when it’s raining or too cold to ride his bike, but he said that it was a frustrating experience because of the lack of information available.

“Many students would ask in WhatsApp groups every day if the buses were operating, which showed there was a lot of potential to improve the system,” Morel said.

Morel, however, has more than complaints—he thinks he may have some solutions. During a hackathon competition, a coding event in which the participants get together to try to solve a problem through programming, Morel said his team in the university’s Computer Science Club chose to improve a university service — the Gus Bus system. They called the project “Gus Bus Plus” and built an app that includes information like the status of both Gus Bus and the P.A.C.T. Bus, which serves Pittsburg as a whole. The app also shows users the closest bus stop and reports whether the buses are working or not.

“The project is still under development, and I plan to add more features, such as notifications when a bus is nearby, speed tracking and alerts about bus availability” he said.

Andrade says that, as an engineer, he believes there are other clear solutions to improve the Gus Bus. He wants the free service to extend its hours to better serve graduate students and even facilitate access to events at the Bicknell Family Center for the Arts — extending its route as well. 

Another possibility, according to Andrade, would be to have two buses, and not just one as it is at the moment.