SU to Inspect Buses After Student Complaints

The Transportation Office has agreed to allow Student Union (SU) representatives inspection of buses following a growing number of student complaints about safety.

On October 18, the R13 bus headed to 6th of October City overheated and was forced to stop on the Ring Road.

Three weeks earlier, the R1 Maadi bus was involved in an accident with another vehicle. The driver was found to have been speeding and summarily fired.

Both incidents sparked student criticism on social media.

“We now have the authority to check the buses at any time. We already went to check up on them for issues,” said SU Representative from the Political and Public Relations Committee Mohamed ElToukhy.

On October 30, SU representatives met with bus services officials to discuss this matter alongside possible solutions to improve bus services quality via increased checkups.

“We had a meeting and we did an analysis on the breakdown of the [R13] bus. We found that from June 2017 to October 2018, 16 months, only seven breakdowns happened to R13.  I don’t want to comment about the number, whether it is good or bad but we wish not to have any,” said Senior Communication Specialist of Transportation Services Heba Ibrahim.

R13 has been the source of student concern and frustration for some time.

Computer Science juniors Marwan ElToukhy and Tarek Radwan, who take the R13 bus often, said that it was not the first time the vehicle overheats and breaks down.

“Last semester the bus heated up and stopped a lot in the middle of the road,” said Marwan ElToukhy.

“The idea is that this has been repeating since I entered the university … not once or twice,” said Radwan.

R13 bus driver Magdy Abdel Aal said in the latest incident on October 18, a car had suddenly stopped in front of him and forced him to swerve onto an artificial speed bump which stalled the vehicle.

Mohamed ElToukhy said that the driver was not completely at fault and also blamed rather the delayed communication with the university to call in a second bus.

“The university was notified late so the emergency bus was delayed. Had the problem been communicated earlier, the issue would have been solved,” said Mohamed ElToukhy.

Abdel Aal explained that it was out of his hands and that what happened was unexpected because the bus was fine.

However, Ibrahim said passengers smelled smoke at the beginning of the trip but no one said anything to the bus driver.

“When we arrived at Oasis Hotel, the bus started to make loud noises. It started heating up and there was smoke in the cabin,” said Marwan ElToukhy.

At that point, the driver stopped the bus and the students, staff and faculty were evacuated.

“I asked students to get out of the bus and I called the company that I work with to send me another bus to take the students. The bus came 35 minutes later,” said Abdel Aal.

But Ibrahim says that when students contacted the Transportation Office at 10 pm the bus driver had still not reported back to them.

Mohamed ElToukhy said that the problem is that the driver doesn’t usually call the university because he knows he will be penalized.

“When this happened, I didn’t think of anything except finding another ride to the students, so I called the vendor first and then we would tell the university,” said Abdel Aal.

Ibrahim also argued that the vendor, Rainbow, also avoided telling the transportation office some of the problems happening with the buses because they penalize them harshly.

Abdel Aal added that students were very nervous and tired. Some of them called their parents to pick them up,  while others tried to reach Uber.

By the time the second bus arrived, there were only four students left requiring transportation.

“The bus stopped in the middle of nowhere, literally we were in the middle of the desert,” said Marwan ElToukhy.

This particular vehicle is no longer operating on campus and  the driver has been penalized, Mohamed ElToukhy said.

Despite the October 28 incident, Abdel Aal and Ibrahim both confirmed that there are regular checkups and maintenance that take place to avoid any problem with the buses.

With respect to this case, Mohamed ElToukhy said that students will be reimbursed the trip’s money via banner.