The reality of transportation for most college students can be a thorny subject. Generally, three options are available to car-less Saint Louis University students who must commute to the medical campus for class.

Option one, walking, is not a bad choice.

It’s great cardiovascular exercise and helps reduce a college student’s sky-high risk of blood clots from sitting in class all day.

Option two—riding a bicycle—offers a scenic pedal across the Grand Bridge, and challenges students to an always-exhilarating game of “dodge-the-oncoming-pedestrians-on-the-narrow-sidewalk”. Finally, there is the third option, which although the most unreliable, continues to be the most popular: the shuttle.

If the current shuttle system is the very best transportation service that the University can provide between campuses, SLU’s medical campus commuters will face severe difficulties come winter.

As a student without an automobile at SLU, I have found my options for getting from place to place fairly limited.

I could live comfortably with the limitations—if I had a reliable method of getting to my classes on the medical campus.

At present, the untimely nature of the shuttle buses has left me late for class on a total of four occasions, and my punctuality is not the issue.

I arrive at the shuttle stop well before the suggested time, and have often found myself opting to walk rather than stand around wondering if the shuttle were making its stops on time. Inclement weather also often prevents myself and other students from deciding to walk to class.

Overall, the shuttle bus has proved itself to be less reliable than Wikipedia.

If the University intends to have students moving from campus to campus, they should certainly provide a simple way for students to get where they have class.

With cold weather and the Grand Bridge closure quickly approaching, the already overflowing shuttle buses will likely experience a vast increase in student travelers.

The current scramble for shuttle bus seats resembles something close to the final scenes of Titanic, a microcosmic drama of its own.

There is very clearly a supply-and-demand issue, and to ensure that all SLU students can move about easily, the University needs to obtain more shuttle buses.

Larger buses would also be a valid option.

Any new improvements to this current terrible situation would likely be highly valued by the thousands of SLU students commuting to and from the medical campus.

Megan Saksefski is a freshman in the School of Nursing