Rose Maxcy waited and waited for her ride to arrive. It was 7:40 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2019, and by 8 a.m., her class was beginning, but she wasn’t there. She was still waiting.
Many students walk, bike or take scooters around campus. But none of those is an option for Maxcy, junior in engineering, whose physical disability made her request the assistance of jAUnt, a shuttle service operated by the University’s Transportation Services.
“I have scoliosis in two major locations: in my neck and the base of my spine, and that can make walking distances kind of a lot,” Maxcy said. “It was equal distance for me to just walk from my apartment to that class.”
jAUnt is described as a “door-to-door golf cart service for students, faculty and staff with a disability or medical condition that makes it difficult to travel within the central campus,” as stated on the Office of Accessibility’s webpage. Up until summer 2019, the Office of Accessibility spearheaded the program, but the University decided Transportation Services was better equipped to run the service.
“I think what we have that [the Office of Accessibility] didn’t is the logistical transportation part,” said Chris Harris, transit operations manager. “They have a lot of knowledge on the medical part, [but] transportation is not their job.”
Regardless of the change in hands, Maxcy said her experience with jAUnt during the fall 2019 semester was unsatisfactory to say the least.
The service asks passengers to designate a time and location to be picked up and where to be dropped off. Maxcy had classes all across campus because she was taking engineering classes for her major and art classes for her minor.
“Going from Biggin Hall to the library was a 50-50 shot on whether they picked me up,” she said. “Taking me to Broun-Kopel on Tuesday and Thursday never happened once, and I never got a call or text on whether they were going to pick me up.”
Camille Preston, sophomore in neuroscience, found herself in need of jAUnt rides after suddenly tearing her ACL in March 2019. She reported similar delays and absences of carts at her provided times.
“I had an 8 a.m. [class], and they told me I had to be waiting outside by 7:15 or 7:30,” Preston said. “I would get out there at 6:45 just to make sure [I was there on time]. They would never come until 7:50.”
Preston was a resident at the Hill at the time and said her class was on the other side of campus, meaning she would be tardy because other passengers needed to be picked up.
“I was either late to everything by 20 minutes, or I was early to everything by an hour,” she said.
She said she was embarrassed to walk in late most days.
Harris admitted that these problems persist, but it’s not because of unsympathetic or sluggish drivers. The program is not directly funded by the University, according to Harris.
This means jAUnt doesn’t have a budget large enough to pay more drivers, but Harris said the number is steadily increasing.
“I think we’re right at about 25 drivers,” he said. “We try to put out five carts a day, all day long, which is more than we did in the fall. We have a lot of drivers who carried over from last semester, but it’s ongoing. I think we hired another driver last week.”
Harris said that newer vehicles will likely address previous maintenance problems described by passengers.
“[The carts] wouldn’t ever work half the time,” Preston said. “They would be running out of battery or inching up a hill. The number of times the driver would have to call the supervisor to bring another golf cart was the most aggravating thing.”
Harris reiterated these issues when discussing the old carts and said the new ones have more durable tires and have yet to break down while carrying students.
Five vehicles were added, doubling the size of the fleet. Three were replaced, and Transportation Services is awaiting the arrival of a new wheelchair-accessible cart.
However, Preston said it wasn’t solely cart failure that sullied her opinion of jAUnt; her drivers’ lack of care when shuttling her to class was also a serious flaw.
“The drivers were just super bad; they didn’t care,” she said. “It was more so they were trying to entertain themselves. They would fly across campus, jump curbs or go over bumps really fast.”
She said this carelessness also posed a danger to her ACL injury as her leg wasn’t supposed to bend or bounce while in a brace. She felt her drivers were apathetic toward this, despite it being their job to look out for their fellow students.
“It was this whole escapade getting on the golf cart,” Preston said. “There wasn’t really a good way to get on it, especially with my leg not working, and they would not offer to help.”
Now that jAUnt is overseen by Transportation Services, Harris said drivers undergo training that makes them more aware of being courteous and thoughtful with passengers.
“We have training that they go through so that they understand what some of the Americans with Disabilities Act is about and how to properly assist passengers,” he said. “Without assisting too much, there is a line that even the ADA draws that says you don’t have to go past this line, but do your best to assist.”
He also stated that because of the office’s reach over the University’s transit systems, jAUnt drivers are frequently monitored on their behavior by Transportation Services staff involved in other driving positions.
“The amount of eyes that watch our folks have changed,” Harris said. “Unlike the guys at the Office of Accessibility who were probably in their office, I have eyes all over the place. Anybody doing anything they’re not supposed to be doing, we get a report and we counsel them, and say, ‘This is why this is a bad idea.’”
Similarly, Preston remarked that the drivers she encountered in spring 2019 were rarely cordial and recalls them telling her they were dissatisfied with their work. Harris said he believes current drivers exhibit integrity and that this must have shifted since last year.
“I give my drivers a whole bunch of credit,” he said. “It’s been raining a lot, and nobody’s called out of work saying, ‘I don’t want to drive in the rain.’ Part of the interview process [asks], ‘Why do you want to do this?’ A lot of them say people out there need help and they want to help.”
But at its core, jAUnt is considered a “courtesy service,” a term that Maxcy said she believes is condescending.
“They specifically say this is a ‘courtesy service,’ like we don’t have to do this for you,” she said.
But the wording is not intended to be demeaning, Harris said; it’s associated with ADA compliance. Saying it’s a “courtesy service” delineates whether a service on campus is required by federal law.
“The reason we call ourselves a ‘courtesy service’ is because we are unfunded — there is no budget for this,” Harris said. “It comes out of the Transportation Services budget. There’s a fine line when you’re talking about ADA and disability services. You can be a ‘courtesy service’ or you can be an ‘accommodation.’”
In the case of being an accommodation, universities are asked to report more statistics on a provided service. Special phone lines and tracking equipment are required, and better mapping and scheduling software is needed, according to Harris. The new fleets will have these features, but the old ones don’t, Harris said.
Transportation Services’ recent move from the TransLoc Rider app to DoubleMap was made primarily to enhance the Tiger Transit system, but Harris said it also allows jAUnt passengers to locate where active carts are if they enable tracking for them in the list of routes.
“We tried to make it more uniform on where we pick people up,” he said. “Each building has four sides, so if we’re not all on the same page, you could be at one of the other three. So, we’re letting them know, ‘This is where we’re going to meet you,’ and that’s helped a lot.”
jAUnt is also looking to overhaul its scheduling system by using a more efficient website it hopes to have ready next semester.
“All the scheduling would be done via the website, so the students won’t have to send us something and we hope we got it right,” Harris said. “We’re getting the server set up, and it’ll probably go through AU Access. We’re hoping it’ll come with a phone app eventually.”
This, he hopes, would eliminate students’ worries about being missed, which is the case with the current indirect scheduling method used. In the meantime, staff want to prioritize emails to instructors of students who don’t make it to class in time because of errors on jAUnt’s behalf.
“If there’s a delay, and it’s our fault, we’ll communicate with the professor, and we’ll say, ‘Yes, this is what happened, and we’ll do better,’” Harris said.
Preston faced communication troubles in registering for the service because her injury was immediate, but former rules told students they must submit medical documentation ahead of when they needed a ride.
“[My mom] called the Office of Accessibility, and a guy said, ‘Sorry, she needs to fill out the form a week in advance,’” Preston said. “My mom was absolutely not [having it]. Basically, they got me a ride.”
A procedure for emergency rides in case of next-day jAUnt use is now in place under Transportation Services’ leadership. If necessary, the service allows students to request a ride to the Auburn University Medical Clinic to receive a diagnosis.
“If somebody hurts themselves the night before, they can call us and say, ‘Hey, I haven’t had a chance to get to the doctor; here’s where I’m at,’ we’ll give you a free ride,” Harris said.
These updates come all too late for Maxcy, though, whose experience with jAUnt has permanently affected her education at Auburn.
“I ended up dropping my art minor because I couldn’t afford the extra semester it’d cause me to have,” Maxcy said. “[Now,] I just kind of deal with having to walk that much.”
Harris hopes future students won’t have to take the same measures to ease their pain of getting around campus as jAUnt’s new policies are implemented.
“We want to run this as best we can to help the students,” he said. “They’re here to get an education and some of them need extra help — we’re the extra help. Last semester was our first semester; there were some growing pains, but this semester I think is going much better.”
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