Grace Morris
Videographer, Animator, Editor
Behind
the wheel
BY GRACE MORRIS
Every morning at 5 a.m., Chuck Smith gets out of bed, eats breakfast and heads to work. He arrives at Elon University around 6:30 a.m., gets out his flashlight and starts the day.
Smith opens the hood of his Bio Bus and begins to inspect the engine, fluids and oil levels checking they are at the proper levels. He then walks around the outside of the bus checking for flat tires, scratches or broken lights.
Once he is confident the bus is in tip-top shape he climbs into the driver's seat and starts the engine.
After resigning as a firefighter, Smith decided he needed structure back in his life and for the past seven years, has been one of Elon’s 23 Bio Bus drivers.
“I actually look forward to it. You know, My wife asked me the same thing, you know, when am I going to retire and I don’t really see that because I enjoy doing this and I need something that is structured,” Smith said. “You know, if there is something I thought I would enjoy more I would do it.”
The Bio Bus is a program run through Elon that provides sustainable on and off-campus transportation for students, by using busses powered by biodiesel fuel.
Smith drives the Outer Loop A route taking students from their off-campus apartments to their morning classes. But Smith said he very rarely gets riders on his first loop around campus.
“Usually what happens is if they spend the night somewhere else they may want to go back to their apartment,” Smith said.
View the Bus Schedules Below
But Outer Loop A isn’t the only route available to students. The Bio Bus runs five regular routes around campus and the Elon area, going everywhere from Danieley to downtown Burlington.
Automotive Services Manager Keith Dimont helped decide the routes that would be available to students.
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“When we first started the system we focused it ... for the students here in Elon. We’d go down east Elon and west and catch the apartments and all the students who need rides to get back into the central part of campus,” Dimont said. “We monitor the routes during the year and listen to requests if things kinda change, buildings or whatever, we take a look at [the routes].”
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The Bio Bus program originally started in 2006, when Elon received a one million dollar grant, something that Howard Coble, the North Carolina State Representative at the time, helped secure.
While the money originally came from the grant it now comes out of student tuition.
The program costs an average of $350,000 a year to run, approximately the same cost as giving full tuition to nine students for one year at Elon. But Dimont thinks it’s well worth the cost.
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“I think it’s a big part of sustainability. As far as, cause if you think about it, you know, If you have fifteen people on the bus, coming to class, you know, that’s fifteen cars that’s not running with emissions, and also that’s not fifteen parking places,” Dimont said.
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The Bio Bus runs off of a special fuel mixture made for the Bio Busses by Potter Oil, a company in Aurora, North Carolina.
According to Dimont, the Bio Bus started with “b20” a fuel that is a mixture of 20 percent processed vegetable oil and 80 percent ultra low sulfur diesel fuel. This saves 20 percent of the busses carbon emissions.
But because of the vegetable oil mixed in with the diesel, in the winter time the Bio Bus has “gelling problems.” When the fuel gets too cold it turns into a gel that becomes difficult to pump.
“The gelling problem is our dispenser pumps and it’s the biggest problem because the filters that the fuel comes through they get clogged then the fuel won’t come through and we have to keep changing filters,” Dimont said.
To combat this problem they use b10 fuel in the winter, which only has 10 percent vegetable oil, and add a non-gelling additive to the fuel mixture.
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“We think we have a pretty good system. Where we’re not having the problems we once had and it’s kinda, like, okay,” Dimont said. “You know, I’ve had people say ‘Well why do you use it if it’s causing you problems?’ It’s like, anything new, you’re going to have problems and if you just stick with it and work through it, you can get through it and I feel like we have, I feel like we’ve got through it.”
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But fuel isn’t the only problem Dimont has to worry about. While the Bio Busses get serviced ever 4,500 miles, occasionally drivers get into accidents.
Smith admitted to taking the mirror off of the Bio Bus once, and Dimont said damaged bumpers have also had to be repaired before.
But while all drivers are required to have a commercial drivers license to drive the Bio Bus, students, like junior Zoie Griffin, feel that this is not enough.
“I don’t feel very safe on the Bio Bus a lot of the times because most of the time they’re just rushing to their next break and usually you can tell that because they are going so fast,” Griffin said. “But a few of them are not the safest drivers and sometimes I wouldn’t be surprised if the bus just flew over.”
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Even Smith agrees that the busses can be dangerous.
“I get into close calls a lot,” Smith said. “This year there are more kids on campus than ever before, there's more cars here… there’s a lot of close calls.”
Griffin has been riding the bus since her freshman year and currently rides it on a daily basis.
“Ever since I came here I started using the Bio Bus because I didn’t bring a car to campus and I wanted to still get off campus without having to pay for Uber or Zipcar or something like that,” Griffin said.
And while Griffin rides the bus every day she says she rarely is on the bus when it’s full.
“Most of the time, the times that I get on there aren’t many people on the Bio Bus and sometimes I’m the only person, but when it comes to like past 4 like 5 p.m. then like 5:30, it can get pretty busy. The bus is never full though, everyone has their own seat or their own like row of seats,” Griffin said.
450 students a day ride the most popular route to the Danieley Center, and 185 Elon community members have ridden the Bio Bus so far this year. That means about 23 students ride the Bio Bus every hour it runs.
But despite the problems of the Bio Bus, Griffin says she is glad it’s around.
“I would be very upset if we didn’t have the Bio Bus. Probably because it is a way of transportation for me, especially because I have a lot of car problems so I wouldn’t want to bring my car to campus every day, so I’m grateful for the Bio Bus,” Griffin said.
For Dimont it’s the drivers that make the job worth it.
“I love getting notes, I’ll get notes sometimes from students who say I get on the bus and I see a smile and I love to start my day that way. And they are the ones who make it go around,” Dimont said.
While for Smith it’s the students.
“What I really like is that I get to know a lot of kids from everywhere. I get to talk to them and I’ve made a lot of friends with them over the years, and I still hear from some of them since they have graduated,” Smith said.
The Bio Bus is hoping to expand soon to add two more routes, one to and from Schar Center before and after games and one to South Campus.
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But for the rest of the Bio Busses, things will remain the same, to keep the wheels on the busses going round and round.