The Bengal Bus is a student-run free shuttle program that takes Occidental students anywhere within a seven-mile radius of campus from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. According to the Bengal Bus Manager Aidan Trinity (senior), the Bengal Bus often travels to Pasadena, Glendale and places in Eagle Rock.
Sheea Sau (sophomore) said that she uses the Bengal Bus at least once a week.
“I actually started using it right after coming to Oxy, and I thought it was really cool because it was free, and it was nice that they offered it at nighttime,” Sau said.
Sau said that she likes to use a combination of the Bengal Bus and public transportation to get to places outside of the campus.
“I don’t have a car on campus, but I definitely use a lot of public transportation like the buses, trains and metro,” Sau said. “During the day I’ll use public transportation, and when it’s dark and sort of scary to use the bus at night, I’ll call the Bengal Bus.”
According to Sau, the service of the Bengal Bus is excellent and the drivers that she has had so far are kind. Sau said that she uses the Bengal Bus both out of necessity and to go places for recreation.
“Usually if I’m by myself, I run my errands,” Sau said. “But I like to go off campus with my friends and we like to use the Bengal Bus if it’s available because it’s just convenient. If you have a big group, it’s nice because you don’t have to worry about splitting up [in different cars] or the cost of an Uber XL.”
According to Sau, the best part of the Bengal Bus is that it is free and accessible. Sau said that the drivers are easy to communicate with, and the Bengal Bus allows students to go straight from their location to Occidental without making stops.
Trinity said that he has been working with the Bengal Bus since 2021. According to Trinity, the Bengal Bus has become more popular since gradually transitioning away from COVID-19. Trinity said that the busiest days are Saturday and Sunday and that the most frequent locations that the Bengal Bus goes to are Target, the Glendale Galleria and Pasadena. According to Trinity, the Bengal Bus also provides students with trips to go to restaurants in the area or pick up take-out food.
“Last year, we did transportation for the boygenius concert,” Trinity said. “And we started doing Target Tuesdays, which has been really good since Target is the number one place that Oxy students want to go to with the Bengal Bus.”
According to Trinity, the Bengal Bus budget comes from the Associated Students of Occidental College (ASOC), and the vehicles are managed by facilities, who keep track of the vehicles and clean them. He also said that the Bengal Bus operates two reserved vehicles.
“One of the selling points of the school is that it’s a liberal arts school in a major city and sometimes it can feel like the city part of Oxy is inaccessible,” Trinity said. “The Bengal Bus is supposed to fill in that gap.”
Trinity said that before the end of the semester, he hopes to do more Wildcard trips, which are day trips during the weekend that would take students to places such as Santa Monica. According to Trinity, the Bengal Bus is going to begin driving students to the Union Station LAX FlyAway instead of their previous three-hour trips to LAX for school breaks. Trinity said that this change will be beneficial because the LAX FlyAway runs every half an hour and will be faster than the Bengal Bus, allowing the Bengal Bus to provide more frequent transportation to and from Union Station. Trinity said that his favorite thing about working at the Bengal Bus is helping students.
“I don’t drive much anymore now that I’m the manager, but I drove on Tuesday and I sort of forgot how fun it can be to drive the Bengal Bus,” Trinity said. “It’s cool because it feels like we are helping students do things that are fun and exciting and improving their college experience.”
Ellie Dunn ’23 said that she worked with the Bengal Bus during her junior and senior years as a driver and a student service manager during her time at Occidental. Dunn said that as a student service manager, she recruited and hired the drivers in addition to holding team meetings and raising awareness for the Bengal Bus. According to Dunn, she is grateful for the experiences that she had with the Bengal Bus.
“You get to meet more people along the way and get a feel for what people are doing off campus,” Dunn said. “You also get involved with field trips and extracurriculars.”
According to Dunn, in order to be an authorized driver, you need to have had your driver’s license for two years, submit an application, interview with the student service manager and then complete an online training. Dunn said that one of her goals when she was the manager was to raise awareness for the Bengal Bus because there are a lot of students who have never heard of it, although she said that she started to see the Bengal Bus become more popular during her senior year.
“It was a lot of new experiences in terms of creating employee schedules and managing all the drivers who were my peers and also building relationships with them that were professional but also friendly and supportive,” Dunn said. “It pushed me to get involved in the community more than I had before and in ways that I hadn’t before. It was an honor to be a part of it and such a great opportunity for growth and increasing accessibility to the city that we live in.”
Contact Jameela Bowo at bowo@oxy.edu
