Picture this: you and your friends —who are freshmen with few connections to any upperclassmen with cars — have just finished dinner at St. Olaf College and are ready to hop on the bus home. You all have papers and various projects due in the coming days, and you’re eager to get back to campus promptly to get some progress done before you’re too tired to stay awake. The sun has already set, but you’re confident that your expert planning skills will ensure a successful journey.

You timed the end of your dinner with 10 minutes to spare; even if the accessible (and free!) Northfield bus is a few minutes early, you won’t miss it. After all, you triple-checked the website. Nothing could go wrong, right? The bus got you there; it would be able to pick you up and bring you back. Well, little did you know that you would be waiting for 30 minutes outside of Stav Hall, straining your eyes to search for a bus that just was not coming. You began to walk as you lost hope that the bus was ever approaching. And as soon as you got a block past the dining hall, the familiar lights of the vehicle started to make their way up the hill. So, naturally, you were forced to sprint your way back to catch up with the elusive bus. How did you get here, you may ask? You decided to depend on the Northfield bus system to transport you off-campus. Unfortunately, though it is a privilege to have a transportation system that can be used free of charge to get around our college town, its cons make it difficult to appreciate this pro.

This specific story may not be reflective of everyone’s experience with the primary transportation option at Carleton, but it’s certainly a true one. And, likely an event that many have gone through in some shape or form. Whether it be missing their ride or waiting for nearly half-an-hour for their ride, there are many opportunities for schedule inaccuracies to ruin a student’s plans for their day or evening. Especially at a school like Carleton, where extracurriculars abound and most students have at least two hours of classwork to complete per day, this occurrence is quite disruptive. You could miss an important meeting, a project deadline, or one of your student-worker shifts. Understandably, the bus times may not line up with their pre-determined schedule. Traffic can be congested, extra stops can be requested, and various mechanical issues can arise. But there is no way to stay up-to-date with these disruptions. The Hiawathaland Transit website does not provide any opportunities for live communication between the bus drivers and students. There is a customer service line, but it does not run for all of the bus’s hours of operation. The most information they provide  is whether  any stops will  be closed on particular days. Although this information is useful in advance, it is comparably less helpful when you are in the middle of your trip.

Previously, students could travel as far as the Dundas cinema and Aldi through the Red Route. Access to the cinema  provided a much-needed reprieve from the stress of Carleton’s  academic rigor, and Aldi is a great opportunity to purchase low-priced goods  including necessities like food and toiletries. Cutting off any stops outside of Northfield’s town limits perpetuates the feeling that many Carleton students feel: that they’re trapped within a shrinking bubble when they don’t have access to a car. Especially for first-year students, this experience is common.

There is well-thought-out reasoning behind keeping students on (or close to) campus. It encourages them to find community within groups around campus and to stretch their scope as wide as they can within the opportunities Carleton offers. Joining clubs, playing for a team and attending student events are all great ways to form long-lasting connections. But by the time winter and spring terms roll around, many students are desperate to add some diversity to their weekly activities. One way this can be accomplished is by exploring a bordering town to Northfield, such as Dundas.

Despite the many shortcomings of the buses run by Hiawathaland Transit, it is a helpful resource for new students on campus. If you plan and bring your work with you to your destination, you can always avoid the issue of missing your homework time. And, though you cannot get to as many places as you once could, destinations like Target, St. Olaf and urgent care (on special request) are still valuable and helpful for students’ basic needs. Nonetheless, there are many growth opportunities. It’s difficult to control a resource that is not run by Carleton College, but our affiliation with the company gives me hope that student feedback could potentially make a difference in how it runs.