GRANT GLOE | THE SPECTRUM
Look at this old tin cannot.

Sometimes, the MatBus feels more like a MatBust, am I right? Have you ever missed the bus? Been pressed firmly against someone who smells like hard-boiled eggs to come away slightly damp? Had the emotional struggle of whether or not to pull the cord for your stop and ended up walking the extra block?

Well, you are so very not alone. Though you should really keep that second one to yourself and maybe take a shower. In any case, I’ve come up with some slight improvements that would make things a lot more pleasant.

First off, we can make it look a bit nicer. We aren’t pizzas; we shouldn’t be shoved into a box and transported to someone who hates the fact that they want us there. Professors aside, it just isn’t dignified. We can make the design a little sleeker, round off the edges and maybe even make it lower to the ground, making it longer in the front and back as the change in body demands. Really launch that prehistoric paddy wagon into the 21st century.

Next, we’ll have to deal with this whole standing issue. This is a public university, and as far as I’m concerned, if the government’s shutdown I shouldn’t need to pay rent or tuition (God I hope this joke isn’t dated by Thursday. I mean, it’d be nice if people were getting paid and whatnot, but at least if the government is still so stopped up it needs prune juice the joke will work.)

As a result, I feel the students who are still footing the bill should expect a higher quality experience. In the context of the bus, that would mean no more standing. Let’s fit in as many seats as we can so everyone can sit.

Then again, this would make it so fewer people could ride one bus without 15 people in a row like pool balls waiting to be purchased. I guess we could just have more buses on the same routes. Hell, if we’re going that direction, we could even have a fleet of smaller buses to make it, so they can navigate the streets easier and move faster.

Maybe even just seat a few people at a time. That way you wouldn’t need to get too cozy with the guy whose skin makes a peeling sound when he steps away from you.

We’d need a lot more drivers though. We’d probably just have to take on a lot of normal people part-time and tell them when they need to pick people up. There could even be an app to see if they were coming or not. Why stop there? We could use the app to request rides from these people and rate the individual drivers for quality control.

That way you’d never be late and you can even communicate with the driver where you’d like to end up going. It’s not like we’d need to pay for digital security, nobody’s going to try to hack accounts. That’s just TV drama stuff right there. In a lot of cases, we could probably even get away with not paying a lot of these drivers. What are they going to do? Sue? With what money?

Now I know this sounds really complicated, but don’t worry guys. There’s a lot of money to be made and a lot of people’s lives we can make easier with this idea. If it ever gets too hard to deal with, we can just resign.

But seriously, if you get on a crowded bus please shower and use deodorant please and thank you.