As the fall semester begins, students have not only adjusted to new courses and professors but to a new transportation app to assist them around campus.
The new app, Passio GO!, now tracks PARTA buses after students were accustomed to SPOT PARTA.
Several students have reported not being notified about the change but discovering it themselves after finding the old app out of service.
Students like Elyse Walters, a senior neuroscience major, found out about yhe new app through an email from the campus parking service.
Walters believed she only received an email because of her commuter pass since other students she knew were unaware of the switch.
The lack of notification about the switch concerned Walters, who found commuting to campus can be difficult when not having reliable information on campus navigation. However, once she installed the new app, she still had a few problems with the technology.
“It’s a little finicky,” she said. “It’s not very user-friendly, in my opinion. I’ve had it say, ‘There are no buses in circulation right now,’ and then it pulls up right in front of me.”
However, Walters does think Passio GO! is an improvement from SPOT PARTA, since she previously ran into even more trouble with the former app.
“In my experience, it worked maybe the first three or four times I ever used it,” she said. “It worked a couple of times, and then just every time I would try to open it again it would crash. It didn’t matter if I tried to reinstall it or update it, it would just never work again.”
Kelly Jurisch, PARTA’s chief of staff, said SPOT PARTA was replaced with Passio GO! because of the updated software PARTA switched over to.
“The software that ran SPOT PARTA was very outdated,” Jurisch said. “It was a legacy system that had been here for over 20 years, and SPOT was really clunky. They were having a problem getting the GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) feed right, and it was really not functional for us anymore.”
While many of the features remain the same, including the expected wait times, Passio GO! contains several new features. Students can see the bus moving in real time, which can help with anticipated arrival times.
Jurisch said students can also select where they want to go on the map, whether that is on or off campus, and the app will tell them the best bus routes to take in order to arrive closest to their destination.
Right after downloading the app, users who know their usual routes should highlight them in the app to track the buses they are looking for. They also have the option of turning notifications on for their specific routes, so they will be notified when the bus is near.
“If you have a stop you are a frequent user of you can even get notifications sent to your phone,” Jurisch said. “So, if you don’t want to come out of a building early, it’ll give you a text message when the bus is five minutes away.”
During the first week of the semester, there were trainers at Dix Stadium showing paths and offering travel training to students who stopped by. One of their main goals was to let everyone know about the new app, Jurisch said.
Jurisch suggested that anyone having trouble with Passio GO! should call PARTA’s main line at 330-676-6701 before 5 p.m. Monday through Friday to ask for training on how to use the app.
Users also have the choice to click the “Take the tour” option located on the app’s main page, which provides a general idea of how to navigate the tracking system.
Students who previously used KSU Mobile to track their buses do not have that option yet this semester. PARTA is willing to connect Passio GO! to KSU Mobile, but it is up to the university to decide how they move forward with this matter, Jurisch said.
Kayla Gleason is a reporter. Contact her at [email protected].
