Piedmont encourages us, as students, to walk to class. Whether this is because of the lack of parking or a push to reduce our carbon footprint, the truth is unless you live off-campus or in the Student Village, Piedmont is a very walkable campus. 

Nevertheless, we live in the foothills of the north Georgia mountains. It gets stiflingly hot and bitterly cold. The good news for students is that we offer a shuttle service. The bad news is that if you have an 8 a.m. class, the shuttle will no longer get you to your class on time. This is a problem. 

While the shuttle is supposed to run on an hour loop, it often doesn’t run on time and when it is, I very rarely see the shuttle stop in one place long enough for students waiting outside the building to get to the shuttle. Without the shuttle call number and only one shuttle running, the shuttle is no longer a viable option for most students to use to get to classes or other on-campus events they need to be on time for. 

On a larger college campus, this would be a fine system because there are multiple shuttles running throughout the day; they use an app to keep track of where shuttles are and where they are going. If the shuttle cannot get us to class on time by doing one big loop, there need to be two shuttles running in smaller circles. Of course, this is an expensive alternative to our old option of being able to call the shuttle, and does nothing to reduce our carbon footprint. 

The reality is if students cannot viably and reliably use the shuttle to get to class, there is little point in continuing to have it run.