Bus Travel Times

<p>How much time should you allow to ride the bus, lets say from Livingston to Busch, Livingston to College Ave, Livingston to Cook/Douglas. Does the time of year- weather play a role in the amount of time to allow? Any chance that the bus would be full and you would need to wait for the next one?</p>

<p>20 min from Livingston to Busch, 25 min from Livingston to College Ave., Livingston to Cook/Douglas varies wildly depending on time of the day. The actual ride is less than 30 min itself, but there’s this huge traffic jam everyday around 3-5 PM so I would leave a lot earlier if you have any classes during that time.</p>

<p>Weather doesn’t play that much of a role unless it’s icy, but that only happened to me once this year (and it was on a weekend).</p>

<p>Years ago, I’ve had 4 buses pass me at this one particular busstop, but it was the last stop on campus and I wasn’t in a rush so I didn’t walk to the other one. It happens, especially at the SAC right before you leave College Ave. to Busch/Liv. The routes are looped though so you could just walk a short distance to the first stop where everyone gets off to ensure yourself a spot. They added more buses last year so I’m not even sure it’s a problem anymore.</p>

<p>Under the best case scenario, without traffic or counting the walk to and from the bus stops, the transit times are as follows:</p>

<p>Gibbons to SAC - F - 7:18
SAC to HILL - A - 8:15
SAC to HILL - H - 24:16
Gibbons to College Hall - F/EE - 2:13
College Hall to HILL - REXB - 8:47
Davidson to HILL - H - 5:19
Quads to HILL - B - 7:28
Lipman to HILL - REXB - 11:43
Biel to SAC - F - 11:30</p>

<p>These are based on my experiments with the NextBus prediction system’s xml feed for ideas on getting to Busch for the fall. Again, this wasn’t done at rush hour so that will obviously increase the times as well as factoring in the walking. FOR INSTANCE, if you estimate a 3 minute walk to the QUADS stop and a 1 minute walk to SERC from the HILL stop, your minimum travel time, assuming you don’t have to wait for the bus at all, is 11:28. BUT, let’s say you wait 4 minutes for the bus, which isn’t really alot, now it’s 15:28. Then add some traffic and close twenty minutes is definitely possible.</p>

<p>Extensive research! A correction I’d like to make is that it only takes about 5-8 minutes at most for the bus ride to get from the SAC to Hill, not 24. NextBus doesn’t pick up on all Hs for some reason. The others seem like they could be right.</p>

<p>You also want to factor in how often the bus comes. As come every 7 minutes for example while the REXB comes every 20 or more.</p>

<p>In general, the staggered schedule provides you with enough time to get from campus to campus if you have back to back classes, but if it still worries you, you can also test it out yourself the day before classes actually start.</p>

<p>Thanks for all the information!</p>

<p>8:15 on the A, H goes all the way around Busch before it gets to HILL so that’s why it takes so long, 24:16. All those stops increase the dwell time dramatically.
This website will give you anything you ever wanted to know about the Rutgers bus system and then some. [The</a> Bus Terminal-A FANSITE about the Rutgers University Campus Bus System, part of ‘The Inner World of S.V.’](<a href=“http://www.angelfire.com/nj3/svinnerworlds/buspage.html]The”>The Bus Terminal-A FANSITE about the Rutgers University Campus Bus System, part of 'The Inner World of S.V.')
The time frequency of buses depends on the time of day. At peak, the REXB is SUPPOSED to be every 11-12 minutes. However, that should be taken with a grain of salt.</p>

<p>The others have answered pretty thoroughly, but in response to your question about whether the buses can get full, making you have to wait for the next one: Yup, definitely. During my second semester, I would sometimes get to gen chem recitation in the nick of time because the B bus (Busch to Livingston) was crammed to the brim with people if I went to BCC too late (and there would still be a gigantic crowd of people by both doors, making a futile attempt to fit themselves). That was a bit before 5pm. The Scott Hall bus stop on College Ave can also be bad at certain times of the day for the A and H buses to Busch. Since we had time, my friend and I would walk to the RSC to catch the next bus before it filled up. This was around 12-1pm.</p>

<p>how do you know when the bus is running/ bus schedule?
is it on the web?</p>

<p>Regular buses start September 1st. Before that, it’s the crappy summer schedule.</p>

<p>^ And when he means crappy, he really does mean crappy.</p>

<p>Expect to have like a 15+ min. wait time between buses. I remember 2 days before the first day of school I was attempting to make my way to Douglass and spent 30 minutes at the Rockoff Hall stop waiting.</p>

<p>Last summer I had to wait 45 minutes for the next bus after my night class. The summer buses during a weekday are every 30-40 minutes depending on the time of day, but after 5:00 the ALL CAMPUS BUS (possibly signed as an “A” though) is the only thing running and it’s on a whopping 70 minute interval and it’s goes through EVERY STOP. CAC —> BUSCH —> LIVINGSTON —> Douglass —> COOK —> CAC . Imagine if your car was on CAC and your class was on Busch. You might as well just walk. The summer buses are a thousand times worse than the weekend buses during the semester.</p>

<p>You guys can use Nextbus to check when the busses are coming. Some stops have Nextbus signs, and others don’t.</p>

<p>To check ahead, you can text 41411 with “Rubus (stop)” and it will text you back all the buses and their estimated arrival times for that stop in the same way the sign would. (Thanks to an automated system by a Rutgers student, yay!)</p>

<p>They’re all pretty efficient, quite honestly. Just don’t have a 15 minute gap in between classes-campuses. Keep in mind, the efficiency is dependent on you being satisfied standing on top of someone else during peak times.</p>

<p>They don’t tell you that in the catalog.</p>

<p>^ Or having some guy breathe down your neck. Or someone’s armpit in your face. I haven’t experienced any groping yet, so that’s good.</p>

<p>Sometimes I use other people for support instead of holding on to the poles and the beams overhead. It’s funny when you see the bus pass by with people packed like a can of sardines – someone’s face pressed against the door… or the butt pressed against the door — it’s quite amusing :D</p>

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<p>noooo D: i was planning to use those first few days to learn the bus system lol</p>

<p>[The</a> Bus Terminal-A FANSITE about the Rutgers University Campus Bus System, part of ‘The Inner World of S.V.’](<a href=“http://www.angelfire.com/nj3/svinnerworlds/buspage.html]The”>The Bus Terminal-A FANSITE about the Rutgers University Campus Bus System, part of 'The Inner World of S.V.')</p>

<p>That page has detailed information about all the routes. It’s going to be updated in the next week or 2 since they just made big changes. No more L buses and the REXB and REXL have more buses now. I think they’re up to every 8 minutes now. The intervals listed on that site are still the old ones.</p>

<p>^ Yeah, I just read about them eliminating the L buses. I liked the L buses :(</p>

<p>Personally, I think they should eliminate the “C” commuter bus on Busch. It’s punishment to be the bus driver forced to drive on that route!!!</p>