I am grateful for Grand Valley Transit (GVT) because I took the bus frequently during my first year of college. It takes about 15 to 20 minutes for the bus to get to CMU Tech from the main campus. I used it a couple of times a week and it was essential to my success during my first year.
GVT has been in the Grand Valley for 24 years. It is a public bussing system and is the first choice for people that don’t possess any means of transportation of their own such as a car or a bike.
One of the main things that I dislike about the public transportation here is that it is only available until 8:30 pm. If I ever wanted to do something off campus after 8:00 it became impossible because I wasn’t able to move around efficiently.
Additionally, having to wait almost an hour for the bus to come around is terrible. I don’t know how many times I had to go to the bus stop at the bank in downtown Grand Junction and had to walk back to main campus because it was quicker than waiting for the bus to come back.
In other cities, the buses are running almost constantly. As Grand Junction expands, this will become more necessary. We have a lot of food deserts in this town and many people don’t have the time during the day to buy groceries. Sometimes the only time people have to run errands is at night which makes it inconvenient when there are no buses available.
The bus also becomes unavailable frequently. On several occasions, I had to walk to CMU Tech from the main campus because the bus just didn’t show up. That is a 45 minute walk. I risked being late for class or missing class entirely waiting on the bus. What if I were going to a doctor’s appointment or a court hearing?
Perhaps, because the number of people that actually use the bus is so low, the city doesn’t give much priority to its safety or convenience. Instead, it turns into an inconvenience because people are forced to adapt to a malfunctioning system.
The GVT bus system is pretty good. But there is always room for improvement. If they extended their hours and had more buses to show up at the stops more often it would be better. If the city actually thought about the minority of people that are forced to take the bus in this city it might be better for everybody else
