By Cameron Petterone
Contributing Writer
Students can now track the Bona Bus by using the smartphone app SmartTraxx, with more buses being added to track in the future.
“It’s live. So say you’re waiting at a stop, you don’t know if the bus came by yet or when it’s going to come by,” said Rob DeFazio, director for recreation. “You just watch the app and say, ‘I’m outside the townhouses and the bus is at Robinson Hall, I know it’s going to be here in about two minutes.”
The new app has students buzzing.
“I think the app was much needed,” said Trystan Rushia, a senior journalism and mass communication major. “I know from my years of going into town, especially during the winter months, that the Bona Bus became helpful to me. It also provides transportation to students who do not have a car on campus.”
Anna Rine, a junior marketing major, shared Rushia’s sentiment.
“The app will definitely benefit [students] because they will have an accurate arrival time of the bus, and they can plan their schedules around it.”
According to Joseph Posillico, a senior math major, the bus schedule has been simple enough for him to remember and he feels that an app is unnecessary for him.
“I did not feel the need for this app because, being at Bona’s for four years, I had a rough idea about the times of the different buses that run on campus.”
However, he does believe that the app can be more useful to other students.
“As I thought about it, the app is very helpful for those students who are new to Bona’s as well as the students who do not have a car on campus,” said Posillico.
The app is completely free to download and did not cost the school anything to make.
“The way the Bona Bus works is that we are in a partnership with the city of Olean, Cattaraugus Country and the Seneca Nation,” said DeFazio. “Because we are in this partnership, the federal government encourages us because we’re ride sharing. There’s less transportation, less cars on the road, and we are working together as community.”
“When you have so many riders and so many miles… there’s funds that become available. So we get rewarded for doing these type of things.”
To track the bus, simply open the app, select “Olean Area Transit System” and allow the app to determine your location. After that, the late busses will be shown around campus in real time, identified by red dots on the map.
The day buses will be added at a later date.
“Students have asked for this for years, and it just came down, finally, to the money being right, zero dollars on our part, collaboration with all the organizations that we are working with and finding a system that would be beneficial and easy to use for everyone,” said DeFazio.
pettrocj16@bonaventure.edu
