“It’s not just a ride, it’s an experience!”, says the Northfield Lines website in bold black font. The transportation provider monopolizes transit in and out of Northfield, playing an important part in the lives of the students at the city’s two colleges. The company’s service covers Carleton and St. Olaf break buses, regular shuttles to the Twin Cities and group transportation for events at the colleges. Since the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year, Northfield Lines has transitioned their ticketing service to the “RidePingo” app.
“The app is, in my opinion, not the most user-friendly experience,” said Zoe Magaletta ’29. Coming to Carleton from Hoboken, New Jersey, Magaletta notes that she is someone very familiar with public transit and has “definitely seen it be very good and very bad, and this is definitely one of the more inefficient experiences I’ve had with public transit”.
According to James Coronado-McDermott ’28, the buses used to be more convenient before Northfield Lines transitioned from their old website to the Ride Pingo app. “It was about 100 times more convenient. It didn’t really make it more convenient for me to have it in the app; it just made it significantly harder to access and figure out how to get a ticket.” Coronado-McDermott said, “There’s also not really a good FAQ section or info section on how you should actually use the app. It just kind of throws you in there and it’s like, ‘okay, good luck’”.
A similar sentiment was echoed in Magaletta’s account. When Magaletta had trouble rebooking her bus ticket after her flight was cancelled due to the snowstorm before spring break, , She and her mother had to learn from another parent on the Carleton College parents Facebook group that “[seats] are not out; it’s just the app being funky’”.
It is from the Facebook page that Magaletta learned that instead of booking through the app, she needed to call Northfield Lines in order to get a seat. “Which I didn’t think was very efficient. It’s an app, it’s supposed to work, right?”
“So I called the bus, and they were like, ‘Okay, and it went through fine.” Magaletta notes that despite the app’s malfunction, the person on Northfield Lines’ customer service line was very helpful, double checking with her that the booking had gone through before ending the call. “So I really did appreciate that. I felt it was super thoughtful.”
Arriving at Willis Hall, the designated Carleton pick-up spot, Magaletta found a long line to board the bus at 9:30 a.m. and the engine compartment of the vehicle to be open. The students were told to come up and provide their name, after which they were informed whether they had a ticket to get on the bus. As people began boarding, Magaletta noticed some students being turned away and asked to stand to the side after learning “something to the effect of ‘your ticket is not activated or valid’.”
Magaletta notes that this “seemed very odd because it seemed like those people had their tickets. It seemed like you wouldn’t go wait in the zero degree weather if you didn’t have a ticket”. Magaletta herself had a ticket and boarded the bus around 9:50, 20 minutes after the scheduled departure time displayed in the app.
Magaletta recalls that after she boarded the bus, two people from Northfield Lines were outside, working on the engine. At this point, the worker originally checking off names for boarding made an announcement to the students.
Magaletta recalls this exchange: the woman says ‘hey, look, we gotta get out of here, and we need a student to help with the bus. We need someone to come out and help us. It’ll make it go faster”.
A student rider who volunteered was led outside the bus and given medical gloves. According to Magaletta, soon after, she could hear the engine sputter to life; after which the student volunteer reboarded the bus and sat down.
Finally, “the bus left at like 10, and they gave the student who helped fix the engine a wad of cash.”
In Coronado-McDermott’s experience, however, he was not able to access his ticket. “I also noticed that I wasn’t the only person having the same experience; there were around eight other people who also got there and had difficulties either accessing or purchasing a ticket,” he said.
According to Coronado-McDermott, this may be because the rides appeared as free on the app. “I couldn’t actually get a ticket, It was really strange”, he said. “The user interface for that app just doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s on par with Workday on how complicated it is to use. It’s really quite hard.”
“Every time it’s like a week before we’re about to go [on break], I shouldn’t see, like, 5 different people asking in every group chat I’m in: ‘how do I use the app, how do I buy a ticket? Why does it say it’s free? It doesn’t say there’s any buses going.’ Every single time. Without fail,” Giovani Cheema ’28.
He expands that the app also makes it more difficult to transfer tickets or for parents to purchase tickets for their children. In comparison, “in the old system where you just buy it online and they email you a QR code to scan with your ticket. That made sense and it worked and it was easy.”
“This could be better, and at one point it was better. And then they just chose to make it more inconvenient”, said Coronado-McDermott.
Because the Break Bus system serves predominantly college students, Magaletta said “I do feel like the college should have more of a role in making sure students have access to transportation that actually will leave on time, it gets into the airport on time.”