While Belleville Transit says the overcrowding on Loyalist-route buses has decreased since the start of the semester, first-year student Arshia Kochar disagrees: “It’s that bad, actually. People are just put inside like animals. It’s so crowded.” Photo by Jessica Schmidt, QNet News
By Jessica Schmidt [1]
BELLEVILLE – Belleville Transit [2] says it was unprepared for how many Loyalist [3] students would be taking its buses this school year.
Ever since in-person classes resumed in September, there have been issues with students being late or missing class [4] due to overcrowded buses leaving them behind.
Joseph Reid [5], the general manager of transportation and operations for Belleville Transit, said the number of passengers has been way more than expected this fall.
“Part of it was we weren’t quite sure exactly where the enrolment numbers were going to be,” Reid told QNet News in an interview Monday.
Loyalist announced Wednesday that the college’s enrolment this fall is the highest in its history [6]. A total of 3,654 students are enrolled, it said. The previous record was 3,518 in fall 2019, before the COVID pandemic hit.
Reid said that Belleville Transit tried to prepare for an increase in riders at the start of this semester by adding an extra bus on the Loyalist route, he said.
The spike did indeed materialize, Reid said, but now it’s starting to level off.
“We’ve been monitoring over the last couple of weeks, and the amount of people that are being unfortunately stranded or left behind is decreasing.”
But Arshia Kochar, a first year journalism-communications [7] student, says she’s still dealing with the issue every day.
On a typical day, two buses pass by her before she’s able to board one and get to the college from her off-campus rental accommodation, Kochar told QNet News Wednesday. As a result, she’s usually late for her classes and sometimes misses them completely, she said.
And even when she can get on a bus, it’s so full that it can be uncomfortable, Kochar said.
“It’s that bad, actually. People are just put inside like animals. It’s so crowded.”
When leaving the college at the end of the day, she also ends up having to wait for a couple of buses before she can get on one, she said. And with buses arriving only every 40 minutes, it makes her days long.
“This route is completely full,” Kochar said. “The bus is so full that you never get a place to sit and you have to stand in between the crowd. For me personally, I feel very unsafe, because we’ve just passed through COVID – and actually, we’re still (in it). So you know, that thing always stays in mind: there are so many people standing near me.”
QNet News sent a request for comment on the situation to Loyalist’s acting president, Mark Kirkpatrick, but was told in an email from the college’s communications department that “We are not commenting on this subject at this time but are not ruling it out for the future.”