Redesigning how Aggies move: A&M campus receives major transportation upgrades
By Hilani Quinones, The Battalion
Published: September 3, 2025
Recent Campus Mobility Project implementations at Lamar Street for the new centralized bus hub at Texas A&M University on Aug. 30, 2025. (Steve Carrasco IV/The Battalion)
Photo by: Steve Carrasco IV
Aggies returning to campus this fall may have already noticed significant changes in the ways they travel around campus,
as Texas A&M continues to implement a major mobility project this fall, adding a centralized bus hub, expanded pedestrian walkways and new designated passenger drop-off zones across campus.
A&M’s Transportation Services aims to ease congestion and improve safety with these new modifications.
This effort incorporated recommendations from students, faculty and staff along with key stakeholders and was guided by inputs
including the Campus Master Plan of 2017 to the President’s Student Experience Study of 2024.
Transportation Services Communications Manager Tad Fifer said this series of planning initiatives and studies is what made this construction project unique.
“Those surveys outlined some challenges and some opportunities that the campus has, and it kind of identified some issues like student enrollment being so big over the past several years,” Fifer said.
Transportation Services Associate Director Clint Willis said support from A&M President Mark A. Welsh III,
COO and the campus architect was given to proceed with the project in such a way that it addressed the needs of the students.
“We have heavily congested areas where we really need to create that separation,” Willis said.
“… We want to create that separation so somebody doesn’t have to worry about if I’m driving a wheel device, I don’t have to worry about a pedestrian stepping in front of me.”
New bike lanes along Ireland Street in Texas A&M University campus on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025.
Photo by: Adriano Espinosa
The new white and green lines on campus aid in ensuring pedestrians do not clash with wheeled devices, creating a standard across campus.
Welsh’s emphasis is on working together to solve challenges and plan for the future which adds to the uniqueness of this project, Fifer said.
“We have a lot of different stakeholders and groups that come together, including the City of College Station and Bryan,” Fifer said.
“We’ve got areas like the Texas Transportation Institute, all involved in this planning process.”
Fifer added that feedback from students on the student experience survey — in which they were given the opportunity to identify areas where they would like to see improvement —
gave Transportation Services the chance to incorporate their feedback into the planning process.
They also conducted a rider survey as the project primarily involved adapting their plan to accommodate what students had requested they do.
To navigate possible confusion from updated transit methods, people can look on the bus route website and use the trip planning feature,
which provides multiple options for where they can go, what stops to get on and different routes available.
“One of the big changes we made, which kind of came out of the surveys, was increasing the service to the engineering corridor area,” Kelm said.
“Before this change, you could really only get from the MSC to that area of campus via one route, and now there’s five.”
Recent Campus Mobility Project implementations at Stallings Boulevard at Texas A&M University on Aug. 30, 2025
Photo by: Steve Carrasco IV
Kelm added that in the beginning of the semester, especially the first couple of weeks, they see a drastic increase in traffic and bus usage.
“We tend to run later at the beginning of the semester just because of the increase in traffic and increase in ridership,
and everybody’s trying to figure out what works best for them,” Kelm said. “You have to try and figure that out by using all the different options that are available to you,
and as people figure that out things start to smooth out.”
They had developed a robust communications and outreach campaign over the summer to engage students and explain what the bus hub is, how it would work,
where service is slightly different and what resources they could use to navigate their trips.
“We presented to a lot of student onboarding agencies like NSFP, ATC, the Fish Camp, T Camp,” Fifer said.
“If you go out to the bus stop right now, you’ll see frames out there, one side explaining where all the routes are, and the other side explaining where they all go.”
With A&M’s decision to pause undergraduate enrollment growth on its main campus for the next 5-7 years. It allows Transportation Services time to catch up and adjust the plan as needed.
With new student housing being built on Northgate and an increase of micromobility devices to get around campus,
they have put a heavy emphasis on understanding where conflict points are between vehicles, pedestrians and scooters.
According to Willis, the biggest concern is people accepting and understanding the changes themselves as well as the purpose they serve.
“The community’s safety always goes into every discussion that we have when we’re planning this project, whether it needs more lighting,
whether we feel like the sidewalk instead of 15 feet, we see that, well, really, this one needs to be 20 or 30-foot wide,” Willis said.
New bike lanes along Houston Street in Texas A&M University campus on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025.
Photo by: Adriano Espinosa
Fifer noted that, in its communications campaign, Transportation Services reached out to all building facility managers in the areas affected along with parking permit holders
and produced a comprehensive signage package.
“Even in the first couple of weeks of classes, we put in parking service officers to alert people, what to expect and how to get in and out of the garage,” Fifer said.
“We realized that there were a lot of drop-offs in that area where people would drop off near the MSC loading dock and pull out and back into the bus hub area.”
The projects don’t just stop at their completion, but they are always watching them in practice, Willis said.
“We’re watching where we predicted a change,” Willis said. “Is that change we predicted? If it’s not, then what do we need to do to make it better for the student?
Is it more signage? Is it better communication, or is it, okay, we thought traffic was going to do this, now it’s doing this. So what do we need to do to mitigate that factor?”
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