As students are already realizing, campus looks very different from what it did before they left for Spring Break.
Along with new traffic lights being put up, one of the major changes is the closure of Andy Holt Avenue due to construction of the new student center.
The construction affects not only students who are driving around campus, but also the transit buses that must alter their routes.
“With the closure of Andy Holt Avenue, that’s a pretty major east-west connector transit service,” Belinda Woodiel-Brill, director of marketing and development with KAT, said.
The closure of Andy Holt Avenue significantly alters two routes.
“One is the east-west route and the other is the Late Night T route,” Woodiel-Brill said. “Both of these are going to be using Cumberland Avenue all the way over to Volunteer Boulevard. So if you are on the Hill and catching the east-west bus, that bus is going to go back out Cumberland Avenue and go all the way to Volunteer Boulevard, and then it’s going to go left on Volunteer Boulevard, and then that gets you back into the heart of campus, where the Haslam Business Building and library is, and will resume regular routes from there.”
The Late Night bus will take a similar route coming back from Fort Sanders. Woodiel-Brill said that instead of going straight from James Agee Street to Phillip Fulmer Way, the bus will take a right onto Cumberland Avenue and then a left onto Volunteer Boulevard. No stops will be made on Phillip Fulmer Way.
Woodiel-Brill said that her team discussed all the options with the UT Parking and Transit Service, and they concluded that these were the best alternative routes.
Nick Frank, senior in finance, said the new routes could be confusing for students who are unaware of where they need to be.
“I can see a lot of people frustrated by not knowing that they were closing the roads and seem pretty lost,” Frank said. “It’s fine for students who know the other ways to get around, but not the people that aren’t on campus much.”
While all the bus stops have new maps explaining where the pick-ups and drop-offs are, Woodiel-Brill said that if students are informed, they will be fine.
“We tried to put as much information out as we could,” Woodiel-Brill said. “We have ridetheT.com website. It has the new map on there. We’ve got new maps posted on the shelters. We tried to get all the bus stops changed like they need to be changed.”
The website provides information about the new routes as well as up-to-date information on any upcoming changes that students need to know about.
“We are encouraging people to study the maps, be sure they have a good sense of where the bus is going so that they don’t stand in the wrong place and tell your friends,” Woodiel-Brill said.
Only four weeks out from finals, Frank wonders “why now?”
“I think the renovations should have been done over the summer, where it would inconvenience less people,” Frank said.
