Students question late-night bus changes

Some students think changes to the late-night bus schedule in Palmerston North were the wrong move. Buses transporting students from the Manawatū campus to town and back again late at night are no longer offered on Thursdays, switching to Friday and Saturday nights instead. 

Second year student Karla thinks that it is important to still have the service offered on Thursdays, despite the newly increased offering. “Fridays and Saturdays usually you can suss a ride or pre-drink at a flat party beforehand. Thursdays are usually purely for students, so me and my mates relied mainly on the bus for transport. If there wasn’t a bus, I can guarantee majority of us wouldn’t have gone out on Thursdays, which would have sucked because it’s kinda the Palmy student thing to do.” 

Second year student Brayden said he never personally went out on a Thursday, but he can see how it would impact others around him who did. 

The town bus service regularly transported partying students on Thursday nights from the bus stop outside the Centre on campus at 10pm to Main Street Terminal, walking distance from Palmerston North’s most popular bars and clubs. Another bus would take students from Main Street Terminal back to campus at 1:30am. 

With the new changes, this service will go from once a week to twice a week and will offer two return trips from town, one at the original 1:30am time and a second at 2:00am. 

This may help to alleviate the pressure on the service, which often had to decline students attempting to board due to a lack of space on the buses and high demand.