Following backlash about unsafe and inaccessible infrastructure around campus, Duke University Parking and Transportation introduced a new fleet of all-electric buses equipped with spikes on the front and sides to more easily kill the cyclists on Campus Drive.
“They keep taking up all the space in the lane and slowing down the C1. Something had to be done,” said one driver of a blue Tesla who preferred to remain anonymous.
The new buses feature state-of-the-art spears positioned at the front and side of the buses to perfectly skewer any cyclist or skateboarder who dares to brave Campus Drive.
“We tried to warn them, but they just wouldn’t listen,” Carlie Pimento, head of Parking and Transportation, told Monday Monday. “We expect this transit upgrade to shred a full 45 seconds off the C1 bus route time. Instead of wasting time swerving around a cyclist, we can go straight through them.”
The decision was lauded by Campus Drive commuters of all sorts. “Those cyclists are just so damn entitled,” first-year John Volkswagen said. “Why don’t their parents buy them a Jeep like normal?”
“I’m no fan of scooters on campus. Why do they think they can take up a whole lane?” asked Teeni Koch, a senior who drives a Ford Ranger and would go on to complain about the lack of parking on West Campus.
In an effort to cut costs, the new buses have replaced bus drivers with AI. The AI has been trained to perfectly shut the doors right before you’re about to get on and will deploy homing technology to take special aim at cyclists without helmets and children.
“I’m not a fan of the new speedbumps on Campus Drive,” said one driver who had unwittingly run over at least two sophomores who were walking along the shoulder of the road near the Arts Annex.
When asked if it was concerned about the lost tuition payments from the fallen students, Parking and Transportation responded that if students can’t afford a BMW and a parking pass to drive to and from class every day, they’re probably unwanted on campus anyway.
This program goes hand and hand with a new initiative from the Landscape Architect’s office, “Skater Hazard Initiative for Termination,” to combat the skateboard epidemic by removing all curbs on campus.
“The skateboarders on the steps of the Chapel are posing a public health risk unlike any we’ve seen in the last four years,” Landscape Architect Bark Tough said. “They are dangerous, no-good delinquent juveniles,” he said about the students who were just looking for sick places to shred. Tough asserts that the boards and loud skating on the Chapel have posed threats to students’ lives all over campus.
“The gnarly shredding is just totally throwing off the sacred vibes of the Chapel aesthetic, bro,” one representative from the Facilities office said. “We’ve gotta put the kibosh on it.”
The S.H.I.T. program includes a ten-thousand-dollar appropriation to smooth back all elevated surfaces — including minor stairs — around campus. The edges would be replaced with ramps that are just a little too steep to be ADA-accessible.
Other proposals included a plan to add 12 lanes to Campus Drive to make it a limited-access superhighway. “The traffic from senior midnight breakfast was terrible,” said Gus Guzzler, a senior. “The only way to solve it is to add more lanes.” The plan was scrapped after campus engineers decided a Campus Drive expansion would not destroy enough homes.
The initiatives are part of a longer-form plan to support the Climate Commitment by removing all cars from campus except Teslas. A spokesperson from Parking and Transportation confirmed that although cyclists and skateboarders would slowly be banned from campus, student-athletes would be given special allowance to keep their scooters so long as they were capped at a “slightly-faster-than-a-brisk-walk” pace.
At press time, plans for the S.H.I.T. program and C1 Spike Installation had been delayed because a rogue student had trampled on the freshly redone Abele Grass, triggering another multi-million dollar renovation.
When the skater purge comes, Monday Monday will be grinding it out on the ramps of Gross Hall.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.
