DeKALB – The sound of Huskie buses driving down DeKalb’s streets are familiar to students and residents alike.
But, the way the bus system operates has changed in the last six years.
NIU students and DeKalb residents made over one million bus trips in 2024, as many as 2020 and 2021 combined. It is likely 2025 will be the first year to match or exceed pre-COVID ridership.
Prior to 2019, DeKalb and Sycamore did not have a unified transit system. The Student Association (now called the Student Government Association) funded the Huskie Line which provided transit service catered to students. Transit for the rest of DeKalb was left to the Voluntary Action Center (VAC) of Northern Illinois.
VAC is an organization that has been providing nutrition and transportation services for DeKalb County since 1974.
In 2018, NIU, DeKalb and Sycamore signed an Intergovernmental Agreement consolidating these transit services which went into effect in 2019. Under this agreement the bus system offers fixed route and paratransit services while VAC continues to operate TransVAC and its Non-Emergency Medical Transit (NEMT) system MedVAC.
TransVAC is a service which provides transportation for individuals in rural communities registered with dial-a-ride services.
MedVAC provides service within a 60-mile radius of VAC offices in Sycamore and supports transit to specialist appointments or Social Security appointments with more details available on the VAC Rider’s Guide and Policies.
Then in 2020, COVID-19 hit. The time available to sanitize a bus was limited. Combined with a pre-existing staffing shortage, COVID-19 forced the city to temporarily reduce service.
The bus system has traditionally catered primarily to NIU students. The temporary closure of campus meant the routes did not have the same population to pull from.
As with any new system, there was a great deal of confusion. Brian Van Hine joined the city of DeKalb in 2022 as assistant transit manager.
“We were getting a lot of customer calls trying to get help riding the bus,” Van Hine said. “We sort of looked at that and thought we could simplify this.”
In addition to route education issues there was a perception problem.
“The residential people are like ‘Well, we can’t ride that bus, it’s for the students’ so Mike and I have been trying to do campaigns… the bus service is for the city,” Van Hine said.
The impact of COVID-19 on public spaces combined with enrollment at NIU resulted in plummeting ridership.
This graph highlights the necessity of a reliable public transportation system. The fact that so many trips are made using Paratransit as well as NEMT along with the fixed route bus services during COVID-19 demonstrates the necessity of a functioning transportation network.
Cody Cahill, a junior human development and family sciences and non-profit and non-governmental organizations double major, uses the Huskie Bus every day.
Cahill was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 12.
“It was literally killing me, my organs were being crushed,” Cahill said. “I was passing out all of the time and I had really severe chronic pain.”
ADA accessibility is important to Cahill, but he said he feels accessibility for people with disabilities could improve across all public transit.
“We’re not below average,” Cahill said. “We’re just average. The average sucks.”
Cahill said his grades would be lower without the bus system.
“I would definitely miss a lot of classes because I still suffer from chronic pain,” Cahill said. ”I faint, I pass out quite a bit. My health is pretty unpredictable.”
Since 2022, the bus system has been on a steady climb back to pre-COVID-19 ridership with increased service for routes such as the 12 to Elburn and other improvements, but the climb has been a difficult one.
“We had a lot of phone calls from students about the Route 2, from probably ’22 to ’23,” Van Hine said. “We got a lot of phone calls about full buses and the buses not running on time.”
Girija Shankar, a junior computer science major, said sometimes he has issues with the bus app, ETA SPOT.
“I had a problem with the 2R bus,” Shankar said. “In the night time, if it’s past 8 p.m., the bus is running, but the thing is it won’t show on the app.”
Cahill said improving the ETA SPOT app should be a priority for the city.
Right now Girija’s issue with bus tracking has a chance to be resolved since the city is currently going through concurrence, which means state and federal authorities must approve the use of grant money. The city plans to start the bidding process for a new tracking system soon.
“Realistically by the time we go through that entire process, we probably won’t be able to implement something until next year. Maybe late this year at the earliest,” DeKalb transit manager Mike Neuenkirchen said.
Given the $2.4 million NIU contributed in 2024 for only $2.40 per passenger trip for a driver, bus, fuel, and so on, it should be no surprise that there remain major issues, but improvements have been made and changes seem imminent.
The improvements that have been made and the recovery from COVID-19 has had a marked impact on bus ridership returning to near pre-COVID levels.
This story is Part 1 of a two part series exploring the Huskie Bus system’s history and impact. The next part will examine the costs of the bus system in financial and environmental terms.
