Student Demands Buses Stop After Leaving Designated Wait Areas

BY AMIRA SHERIF

The Office of Facilities and Operations, which manages the campus transportation services, told the Caravan that bus drivers are obliged to follow strict guidelines about where they can stop and wait for students.

“University policy and transportation rules state that no driver is allowed to stop for any [member of the community] unless [they are] at one of the designated bus stops,” said Transportation Manager Mamdouh Gaber.

The office was denying rumors that circulated on the Rate AUC Professors Facebook page claiming that bus drivers were now allowed to pick up students after the vehicles have left the stops where they normally pick up community members.

The issue came to the fore when Haggar El Riffay, a Petroleum Engineering junior, waved to a driver leaving the Agouza bus “station” to stop and wait for her to get on board.

El Riffay said the driver drove on leaving her with the only option of hailing a taxi to reach campus.

“I was only three minutes late and called my friend to ask the bus driver to wait for me [to cross] the street…to be able to take the bus without making him neither stop nor return,” El Riffay said.

After arriving on campus El Riffay went to Gaber’s office to file a complaint.

Gaber supported the driver’s actions and said had he would have been reprimanded had he stopped after leaving the bus stop.

El Riffay said that she will no longer pay the ticket fare when riding the bus.

Gaber said he would take legal action against her if she went through with her threat.

El Riffay’s complaints soon solicited support from other students who visited Gaber’s office to voice their own grievances and demand that bus drivers stop for AUC commuters.

“Bus drivers talk on the phone while driving, there is no proper Wi-Fi and there are drivers who [exceed] the speed limits [to avoid] arriving late to [campus],” said Hossam Shafick, chair of the External Affairs Committee in the Student Senate.

Gaber explained that drivers who commit such violations are penalized and in some cases get fired; unless their managers are the ones trying to reach them.

“There [should be] no such thing as a policy [against] stopping for students because there are drivers [at other pick up points] who stop to take them; so a rule should be either obeyed completely or not applied,” he added.

Following her complaint, El Riffay met with Hassan Abo Taleb, deputy chief of Security who wanted to hear both sides of the incident.

She was given a Q&A form regarding the incident that she needed to fill in.

“We filed the case and most probably a case will be filed against the bus driver,” said Mina Halim, Petroleum Engineering junior who is also a friend of El Riffay and attended the meeting with Abo Taleb.

Gaber said he has no issue with a student filing a grievance about the bus services.

“But the problem is in the way the students expressed their concerns,” he said.

He later met with the bus drivers and reiterated the policy prohibiting picking up commuters beyond the designated waiting areas.

Meanwhile, the Caravan learned that the R12 Downtown bus was involved in an accident on the October 6th Bridge.

Driver Mohamed Said said that the car in front of him suddenly stopped, forcing him to break but not before the AUC bus was rammed in the rear, causing moderate damage.

“The girl that was driving the car in front of me was quickly smuggled out by the guy who was sitting next to her because she had no license,” Said told the Caravan.

Daniel Tamer, an Accounting sophomore and one of the commuters, said that students expressed solidarity with the driver and demanded that the girl driving the car be held accountable.

But photography professor Ronnie Close who was also on the bus said, “The bus staff were slow to react and never made an announcement.”

Ahmed Taha, manager of transportation drivers, said their investigations exonerated Said and that the transportation department paid for the damages.

“We have 233 trips operating at AUC each day and when there is a problem in one or two buses this does not mean that we failed as a bus service,” said Gaber.