On most mornings, before the campus is flooded with the buzz of students rushing off to class, there’s one Regional Transit System bus driver who makes Route 20 feel less like a bus line and more like a slow-rolling train ride, greeting each passenger with an enthusiastic “Welcome aboard!”
Laurie Milfort, a University of Florida student, noticed the vibe the first time she stepped on the bus.
“He makes it, like, more enjoyable,” Milfort said. “That really makes a difference compared to others who just, you know, let you on.”
Moments like that stand out these days because for many Gainesville residents who rely on the RTS for daily transportation, riding the bus has become more stressful.
City bus riders were directly impacted when several routes were eliminated or altered last summer, when a new budget took effect. The cuts in service were a result of UF reducing its funding by nearly $4 million, from $13.7 million to $9.9 million, so it could reallocate some of its resources to campus-specific transit.
This change, according to a community impact analysis from the City of Gainesville, is expected to generate over 8,300 new daily average vehicular trips on average. This is a major concern as it could lead to increased congestion along roads, deemed the city’s High Injury Network (HIN), including sections of Southwest 34th Street, Archer Road and University Avenue.
Indira Cummings, a fourth-year UF student who has been riding the RTS buses since her freshman year, said this funding cut marked a turning point.
“It’s been pretty good up until, you know, this summer,” Cummings said. “They had the bright idea to cut a good chunk of [routes] that went to the main places on campus.”
Interactive map: Explore the recent changes made to the RTS system on the UF campus and across Gainesville. (Design: Olivia Velardo and Mikayla Johnson/WUFT News)
The removal of routes and schedule changes, she said, have only gotten worse since summer once the full student body returned.
“Don’t go to the Reitz stop if you want to go home. You will not sit down,” Cummings said. “There was one time I got on there and it was filled to the brim.”
Meera Sitharam, president of the United Faculty of Florida, said that the university’s transportation issues are deeply tied to broader infrastructure and funding challenges that have evolved over time.
This financial partnership between the RTS bus system and UF spans over the course of 27 years, creating a codependent relationship between the two. This shaped how students, faculty and staff made key decisions, like where to live and how they would get to campus.
“There was a lot of planning that students made as a consequence of thinking that there was a certain rhythm and certain coverage of bus routes,” Sitharam said.
When addressing the new changes made to the RTS bus system and funding cuts, Sitharam said that it “is going to have a major effect on not just how students and other people who relied on these transportation mechanisms feel about their options, but also the way in which the whole traffic is now going to be routed around campus.”
With fewer people relying on buses, she warned, more people are driving on campus with a limited number of parking spaces. Others will turn to costly alternatives like rideshares, creating new financial burdens.
A spokesperson for UF has previously noted that the university remains a “primary contributor” to RTS at just over $10 million, despite the reduction.
As bus routes are cut and fewer people can rely on public transit, campus parking and traffic is becoming an increasingly urgent problem. Without coordinated solutions, noted concerned riders interviewed for this story, the ripple effects of these transportation changes will continue to impact nearly everyone who relies on vehicles — cars and buses alike.
In comparison, universities like the University of Wisconsin-Madison saw a positive shift in road congestion and improvements in public transit systems when they started expanding their bike infrastructure.
According to an article by Fast Company, between 2006 and 2013, the number of students who biked to class leaped from 14% to 22%. The rise of the cycling culture had to do with B-cycle, which is the city’s bikeshare program.
