A University of Georgia bus driving through its route on Hooper Street.
(Top Left) Evan Smiles, a junior double majoring in finance and sports management, sits on a bus at the Intramural Fields at UGA. He discusses the challenges and benefits of working for the UGA campus transit system. (Top Right) The UGA bus system identification number. Evan Smiles’ bus was made in 1995.
By Lauren Barron
ATHENS, Ga. – Evan Smiles, a student attending the University of Georgia, drives in circles around campus for hours a day. And he gets paid to do it.
Smiles is employed by the UGA Campus Transit System. More than 150 people work for campus transit, many of them part time student workers.
“I like working for campus transit because they work around my classes well, and it’s the highest paying student job on campus,” said Smiles, a junior from Stuart, Fla., double majoring in finance and sports management. “I can also use the skills I learn here later in life, like when I’m moving and need to drive a truck.”
The pay rate for a student working with campus transit is $10 an hour.
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, www.transit.uga.edu. There are currently 47 running UGA buses.
“We have to go through about four months of training before we can drive people,” said Smiles, who has been driving a bus for 17 months now. “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.”
Annual ridership of the UGA buses is second in the state of Georgia only to Atlanta’s MARTA.
"We are more successful than other universities because we have a lot of support by the students,” said Ron Hamlin, UGA’s campus transit manager. “Not all students have a transportation fee like we do; some people have to buy passes and fares.”
When UGA’s transit system was founded in 1966, it cost five cents to ride a bus; now, 93 percent of the capital and operating expenses are covered through the student transportation fee of $103 per semester.
Although most students enjoy the benefits from paying the transportation fee, some students would prefer to pay a daily fare.
“I only ride the UGA buses once a day at most,” said Nishil Patel, a third-year finance major from Cumming, Ga. “I would much rather pay a small fare each day than $103 per semester.”
However, the fee also gives students access to the local government-operated transport system, the Bus, through an agreement between UGA and the Athens-Clarke County government.
“I use the Athens buses a lot more because I live off campus,” said Patel. “The fee makes more sense when you know it includes UGA and Athens buses.”
Not only do students ride the university buses, but professors and Athens residents help make up the 31,000 average daily ridership.
Smiles complained, though, that there are difficulties to driving a bus for hours at a time.
“It’s boring sometimes, driving in circles,” Smiles said. “And some of the older buses are so slow. Their brakes are wearing out, too.”
One of the buses Smiles drives is bus No. 93596. The last three digits of the number, which can be found at the front of the bus, are what the drivers refer to the buses as.
You can even calculate the age of any UGA bus by looking at the second and third digits. A “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. Smiles’ bus was made in 1995.
In 2007, the UGA buses began using B20 for fuel, a blend of 80 percent petroleum diesel and 20 percent biodiesel, making UGA one of the largest users of biodiesel in the state.
Biodiesel is better for the environment than pure petroleum diesel because it is made from renewable resources and has lower emissions.
However, Hamlin said that the buses no longer run on biodiesel because it became too expensive after gas ran over $4 a gallon. Instead, he said that the university is buying buses with particular traps on the gas, which will allow for better emission control.
These traps can be compared with filters. They catch and burn the particles that are ordinarily exhausted into the air by the buses, greatly reducing the total emissions.
“Buses are greener than your personal automobile, and as we replace buses, we replace older technology,” Hamlin said. “The 2009 model of the bus has the latest technology for emissions control. The stuff coming out of the stack was cleaner than the air going into it.”
Edited By Casey Bruce
Nice job filling in many of the factual gaps from the first version. Lots of good details here. The focus on Hamlin humanizes the story and makes it more about people than buses. Some actual color from him driving the bus, taking a tight corner, interacting with riders, would be ideal.
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