{"id":26338,"date":"2025-01-22T09:00:58","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T17:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=26338"},"modified":"2025-01-17T10:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-17T18:12:17","slug":"camosun-students-concerned-about-public-transit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2025\/01\/22\/camosun-students-concerned-about-public-transit\/","title":{"rendered":"Camosun students concerned about public transit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many post-secondary students depend on the transit system to get to campus, and the Camosun student body is no different. The fees they pay in their tuition provide them with access to a BC Transit UMO bus pass, so even if students have another way of arriving at school, it makes perfect sense to use public transit. But when it comes to fully relying on buses, many students\u2019 experiences have left them disillusioned.<\/p>\n

Victoria\u2019s bus riding population is large, and while Statistics Canada shows that Victoria has a higher rate of convenient access to bus transit (in the range of 84 percent to 93 percent) when compared to other census metropolitan areas, disruptions and transit issues remain numerous\u2014and for many routes, the number of buses scheduled is relatively low.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wish that the 39 ran later, because it doesn\u2019t run very late, and it goes every hour. Same with the 8,\u201d says third-year Business student Angel-Blue Horvath-Veselinovic. \u201cSo if you have late classes, it doesn\u2019t always line up.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Students boarding a bus outside Camosun College\u2019s Lansdowne campus (file photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Horvath-Veselinovic has also had classes at both Interurban and Lansdowne campuses and experienced struggle in transiting between the two on time. She isn\u2019t the only one with complaints about the frequency of service. Second-year Visual Arts student Silvan Wood thinks similarly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI moved from Nanaimo, and the [Victoria] schedule is leagues better, so I was really excited when I moved here because I was like, oh, cool, I can actually catch buses,\u201d says Wood. \u201cBut I find that the schedules on frequent routes aren\u2019t necessarily frequent enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fourth-year Visual Arts student Erin MacQueen is in the same predicament.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe only reason why I take the 95 is because buses like the 53 and the 65, that are actually a little bit more accessible to me, just never come,\u201d says MacQueen.<\/p>\n

Some students acknowledge that there are limitations due to the city\u2019s size, but the issue hinders their ability to get to and from school.<\/p>\n

\u201cVictoria is not the biggest city, so our transit system is pretty limited in scheduling and where you could go,\u201d says third year Art History & Visual Studies UVic student Rhiannon Jeffrey. \u201cIt\u2019s difficult because obviously you need more people to take the bus to be able to offer more bus routes, and then those things take time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schedule accuracy is also a common concern for students. Specifically, buses running severely late can at times lead to a pile-up. BC Transit\u2019s Ridership Performance Report from March 2024 shows that their target is 70 percent on-time departures\u2014a report from the previous year showed that 15 routes out of 57\u201426 percent\u2014hit or exceed that percentage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had buses delayed or cancelled\u2014and there\u2019s lots of people coming on that bus, so if they\u2019ve cancelled one bus, you might have to wait [for] two,\u201d says MacQueen. \u201cThat\u2019s still 15 minutes\u2014so that\u2019s 15 minutes less time that I have to get to school or work, so I have to be early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeffrey says that while taking the #4 bus at morning rush hour, between 8:00 and 9:00 am, the bus was consistently late; as a result, she was frequently late for class. She says she would like to see more bus lanes and express buses here in Victoria.<\/p>\n

Horvath-Veselinovic also says buses are poorly scheduled and tend to get backed up, noting that routes such as the #14 would not come for an extended period of time, with two or three showing up simultaneously.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank God most of the teachers are understanding of buses and their unreliability,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve definitely been late to classes despite leaving on time and giving enough time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many post-secondary students depend on the transit system to get to campus, and the Camosun student body is no different. The fees they pay in their tuition provide them with access to a BC Transit UMO bus pass, so even if students have another way of arriving at school, it makes perfect sense to use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26339,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,325],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-january-22-2025"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26340,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26338\/revisions\/26340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}