justletmeknow

Every weekday at 8:00 AM hundreds of students are on their way to university. The centre of this happening is usually in Central Station in Groningen. Many Dutch students are coming from Assen or Drenthe, places near to Groningen. Others, for example international students are not used to cycling and prefer to take the bus. Every morning, five days a week.
Normally you could guess that the regional bus company “Qbuzz“ should know the situation and how to handle the huge number of students. In fact they don’t: The sign “Bus Vol” rises from the front and side of the lines 11 and 15 on their direction to the Hanze University every morning, several times. In one hour, that means in total that thousands of students try to make their way with the bus, but they have to wait a minimum of ten minutes to get a free one. This year especially, the company faced some major problems. Besides the huge number of Dutch students more than 2500 international students came to Groningen this autumn, which is more than they had expected.

To their own success the company has already reacted. Jan Paul Corts, one of the Traffic Managers explains in an interview:

JLMK: How do you try to handle the problem?

JPC: “We use extra buses at the moment. In top rush hour we have seven extra buses running on their way to the university. That means in total line 15 is running 20 to 25 times per hour from Central Station to Zernikeplein. Line 11 is also running about 10 times an hour. ”

JLMK: But you can see that it’s not really enough.

JPC: “Right, especially in the rush hour. We have to write new timetables for the next time and maybe work more intensively with the university to know how many people will come next year.”

JLMK: Do you plan to change something this year?

JPC: “Actually we update every single day. But of course you can imagine that in top rush hour we have about 350 buses running in the whole area of Groningen. Well, we just can’t add more buses because we simply just don’t have them. So, it’s not easy to handle but we try our best.”

JLMK: You had the problem last year as well, right?

JPC: Of course it was always crowed in the rush hours, especially around 8.30 to 10.30. But this year we think we have way more guests than last year. It’s much worse.

JLMK: What do you take into consideration when creating the timetables?

JPC: Good question, because I’m responsible for that. The big problems with lines 11 and 15 is that they are not busy every morning at the time. For example on Monday and Friday the real rush hour starts later than 10 o’clock in the morning. When you do a timetable with 20 buses now running at 8 in the morning, half of them would be empty. So you need to make choices. We chose to use 8 buses per hour and to add some when we see that there’s a need for them.

JLMK: Could it also be that it depends on the weather, the schedules from the universities and other facts you really can not know about?

JPC: “Of course. We also don’t know when there’s an exam or specific holidays. We wouldn’t send in as many buses these days, it would be a waste of money because of empty buses.”

JLMK: Are you trying to get in contact with the university to get information about the schedules and other information?

JPC: “We already know that there are different schedules, so you can not say it’s usual. Some days classes start at 8, some at 9 and others at 11. We also find out that a lot of students stay home at their parents home and come by train from Assen or else every morning. That fact makes it easier for us to use the extra buses because we know about the arriving time of the trains and add those buses in that moment. But that’s all we can plan in consideration of the students life.”

JLMK: To sum up: When can we detect a positive development on the buslines?

JPC: “It will take some time to arrange a good situation of course. Every day it’s getting better so next year will be better. You will see.”

This year no other opportunities can be arranged, Jan Paul Corts assures this. The maximum number of extra buses are achieved and the students have to learn to handle the physical contact every morning. Fortunately the company employes flexible bus drivers like Peter Pool. He says he likes to take the students with his bus and it feels painful to leave them at the bus station when his bus is full. On the other hand it is not allowed to take them when they doesn’t fit. “There’s a yellow line. They are not allowed to stand there because I have to see the traffic. For their safety”, he explains. Furthermore he describes some tricks to relax the situation in crowded loud buses: “I know some bus drivers that are singing. This is good for the students. They like it”.

If some students can not accept this situation, they can feel free to jump on their bike and go this way to the university. It’s stress-free and better for their health