A day in the life of a UGA bus driver

By Lauren Barron

ATHENS, Ga. – Evan Smiles, a student at the University of Georgia, drives in circles around campus for hours a day. And he gets paid to do it.

Smiles, a junior from Stuart, Fla., double majoring in finance and sports management, is employed by the UGA Campus Transit System. More than 150 people work for campus transit, many of them part time student workers.

So why work for campus transit?
I like working for campus transit because they work around my classes well, and it’s the highest paying student job on campus.

And how much is that?
$10 an hour.

What else is nice about driving a campus bus?
Well, I get to listen to the radio and my iPod when I’m driving. I never have to work that late either, and I can give away and pick up shifts easily.

What don’t you like about it?
It’s boring sometimes, driving around in circles. Sometimes other cars get on my nerves. I have to sit in traffic all day. Some of the older buses suck, too. They’re either slow or the brakes are wearing out. I can press my foot all the way down on a couple of the brakes and it’s still coasting.

How do you know how old a bus is?
You just have to look at the number at the front of the bus. The bus that I’m driving now is 93596. If someone wanted to alert me on the radio, I would hear ‘596.’ But you can find the age of any UGA bus by looking at the second and third digits. The ‘3’ means that the bus was made in the 1990s. A ‘4’ would mean 2000s. The next number, 5, is the specific year within the 1990s or 2000s. The bus I’m driving now is one of the older ones. It was made in 1995.

What kind of training did you have to go through before you could drive people?
Oh gosh, we have go through about four months of training before we can drive people, depending on the amount of hours you can put in.

How did it feel to drive your first passengers?
I used to get nervous when I drove people, especially when the bus got packed. Now it’s nothing. It’s just like driving a regular vehicle. I don’t feel like I’m driving something that big.

Do the buses ever get in any accidents? And do the drivers get punished for them?
Yeah, probably around once every two weeks. Sometimes it’s fender benders, tapping the mirror of another bus, hitting the back of another car. The drivers for these minor offenses aren’t fired – only after a certain amount of damage do they fire you.

Have you ever been in an accident while driving a bus?
[laughs] yeah, just once. I was on Broad St. and the lanes are very skinny, and he was on the line of the lane. I thought I had enough room and I just hit his mirror. I saw him look at me but he just took off.

Are there any interesting people that get on your bus?
Sometimes professors and Athens residents get on. One guy was trying to make me drop him off when I wasn’t allowed to stop. He started cussing at me but I kept going until the bus stop and when he got off I told him maybe he shouldn’t be riding UGA buses. Then I shut the door in his face when he tried to get back on and drove off.

So does that mean you’re allowed to kick people off your bus?
Yep. It’s my choice. I have to have a good reason, though. This one older lady told me to change my music because she heard curse words. I could have kicked her off for that but I didn’t want her to call my bosses.

Some students complain that the UGA buses aren’t reliable. What do you think about that?
I think they’re reliable for the most part. Maybe not during class changes because traffic gets bad. It’s hard to stay on time then.

Will you work for campus transit until you graduate?
Most likely, yes. I’ve already worked here for 17 months. I can also use the skills I learn here later in life, like when I’m moving and need to drive a truck.

Campus transit currently carries the largest volume of passengers of any university transit system in the United States, over 8 million a year, according to the university’s transit Web site, http://www.transit.uga.edu/.
Annual ridership of the UGA buses is second in the state of Georgia only to Atlanta’s MARTA.

Edited by: Charles-Ryan Barber