Enlightening, But Certainly Not Trippy

By Jessica B. Passione

Imagine for a moment that you’re on a crowded bus, it’s so humid inside that the windows are foggy and the heat is mercilessly pumping because it’s the middle of winter. Is this smothering situation due to mother nature?

Nope, it’s the hot breath of dozens of CSI students jam-packed into a confined space. Uncomfortable is an understatement, but getting off the bus and waiting for the next one isn’t an option.

The S93 from Brooklyn to CSI runs every fifteen minutes between the hours of 6:45 to 9:45am and 4:30 to 10pm.

If you’re part of the unlucky crowd that needs to get to CSI during the gap between 9:45am and 4:30pm, tough luck because the bus only comes every 30 minutes at that time.

When it comes to the S93, arriving twenty-five minutes early to your scheduled bus time is arriving twenty-five minutes too late.

By then, the bus line has already stretched across the main avenue, reached the corner, and is beginning to make its way down the side street. This happens every single day.

CSI students wait for the bus in a single file line based on who arrived first, (I like to believe it’s because we’ve formed some sort of brotherhood or bond).

We all know that if we made it our business to get to the bus stop a half an hour early, that we would hate it if someone tried to skip us. We earned that spot on the line.

It’s like The Amazing Race for a spot on the bus, but instead of getting a million dollars, you get to arrive to class on time.

The commute home from CSI to Brooklyn is a nightmare in and of itself–especially during hours when the bus runs every thirty minutes.

Sometimes they’re late and sometimes they don’t come at all.

You can have students waiting for the bus that are being released from classes at three different times.

The line winds around and inside the bus stop, out through the maze of barricades put up by CSI, and spills out across the pathway in front of Building 1A.

The lines have gotten so out of control at night that Public Safety officers often stand at the front of the line to avoid chaos breaking out. If your night class is dismissed after 9:15pm, you can forget about taking the S93 because the last bus to Brooklyn leaves at that time.

It’s ridiculous because the last class at CSI ends at 9:50pm, so there is no reason why the bus should stop running an entire forty-five minutes before that time.

A bus leaving at exactly 9:50pm wouldn’t do the trick either, we need for buses to run until at least 10:15pm. The S93 is a limited bus route to and from CSI so it should revolve around CSI’s schedule.

Since it does not, students either have to take the shuttle bus to the ferry and a train back into Brooklyn, or take two Staten Island buses that will get back to Brooklyn in just under TWO HOURS.

That’s the exact opposite of what a student wants after being in class until 10pm.

Up until August of 2014, this limited bus route didn’t even exist.

Students, as well as bus drivers, took it upon themselves to complain until their voices were heard and acknowledged.

This time around the bus drivers seem to be more upset than the students.

During my 11:30am bus ride one Monday morning, the very irritated bus driver made several announcements that students should complain to the MTA about what is going on.

About a dozen students couldn’t even get on the bus and were forced to wait until the next bus was due to arrive at noon–that brought their wait time to an entire hour.

As the bus driver was making the announcements, I looked at the faces of my fellow students and was aggravated by what I saw.

Some were on their phones barely paying attention and the ones that were listening had practically no emotion on their faces.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why the bus driver seemed more bothered than the students did, and then I remembered something very important that he said.

He mentioned that he had been putting in daily reports about this issue.

It dawned on me that the reason these students weren’t bothered was that they probably have no idea how incredibly strong their voices can be.

This problem can be fixed the same way it was before. Commuters NEED to call 511 and go to MTA.info to place reports.

We’re always on our smartphones anyway, right? The power is literally in our hands.