By François Biber

U of S getting Saskatoon students back on buses

Oct 9, 2014 | 4:07 PM

Starting Friday the University of Saskatchewan plans to spend $10,000 per day to provide bus service for its students.

“As the transit dispute continues on and the weather starts to turn we figured we needed to do somthing for our staff and students who have the least access to alternative transportation,” Jeff Dumba, associate vice president of financial services at the U of S said. “We’ve heard some of them are walking an hour-and-a-half to two hours a day to get here, some are biking and carpooling and as the weather turns those options will be less and less.”

The U of S has contracted Hertz Northern Bus to provide 22 yellow school buses for morning pickups and evening drop offs. However, because Hertz provides service to other schools in Saskatoon, bus services won’t be consistent throughout the day.

“We’ll be doing an early morning pickup at 7 a.m., then a second pickup at 9 a.m., a third pickup at 11:30 a.m. and a return just after noon from Place Riel,” Dumba explained.

An evening return is scheduled to leave campus at 5:15 p.m. with another pickup scheduled for 5:45 p.m. The last return bus will leave campus at 10 p.m. so students taking a night class will have to head to campus a little earlier if they want to catch one of these buses.

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“We’re not a transit company nor will we ever be one and so this is best efforts and while we know where our students live we don’t know what the demand is going to be like,” Dumba said adding a map showing where university students live in the city has helped them pick the 12 bus stops.

With a limit of 47 passengers per bus, volunteer stations at each stop will relay information to a command centre at the U of S where they can request extra buses if they see a backlog.

While the U of S hasn’t seen a sharp decline in attendance, Dumba said he’s heard about students thinking about dropping classes in light of not being able to get to campus.

“I don’t think we’ve seen a significant withdrawal but we certainly are getting the message loud and clear that it’s about to happen,” he said.

Dumda added the U of S is committed to providing these buses to students for as long as they have to until public transit services resume in Saskatoon. Bus services are free to U of S students, but they must provide a valid student ID to board.

A schedule for the U of S buses is available online.