For almost every student, the College is hard to reach. Nestled in the rolling Berkshire hills, it is over half an hour from the nearest Amtrak station in Pittsfield, an hour from the nearest commercial airport in Albany, and three and a half hours from New York City and Boston — all by a car, which many students lack. While the three-to-four hour trips home for students from the Northeast are an annoyance, for those of us from further away, they’re just one leg of a difficult trip to or from the College.
The College’s motorcoach program, which provides relatively easy access to New York, Boston, and Albany, works reasonably well for students whose final destinations are in cities it serves. However, it does not work as smoothly for those of us who are connecting from flights. As the College has become more geographically diverse, it must work to make transportation here more accessible for students who come from more distant parts of the country and the world by providing greater flexibility for motorcoach tickets and adjusting the schedule to align with flight arrivals.
I live in San Francisco, and the trip to Williamstown usually entails waking up at 5:00 a.m. for a 7:00 a.m. flight to New York or Boston, followed by a trip on the motorcoach. If I have flown into New York — usually the cheaper option for me — I also have to take the Long Island Railroad or New Jersey Transit from one of the airports to Penn Station, where the motorcoach leaves. All told, the trip takes around 12 hours. For those coming from overseas, it is even longer, often with multiple stops, each contributing additional friction and expense.
I chose to attend the College well aware of the fact that getting here from the other side of the country would be difficult, knowing that its rural location also lends many benefits: the intentionality and intensity of a college community where people spend weekends and evenings on campus rather than coming and going frequently, the chance to live in a wonderful small town where people know and genuinely care for each other, and the joy of living in a truly beautiful corner of our country with numerous opportunities for outdoor recreation.
The College can only do so much to mitigate the difficulty of reaching Williamstown — and to its credit, it already does a great deal to help students travel to and from the College at the beginning and end of terms. It is a great help that the College offers a travel grant as part of financial aid and provides motorcoaches to help students access airports and major cities.
However, the motorcoaches work better for some students than others. While they are quite convenient for Bostonians and New Yorkers, their schedules present additional challenges for students from further afield whose travel plans include additional moving parts.
For example, at the start of this academic year last September, the motorcoaches from Boston airport left at 3:45 p.m., which, depending on the time of year, can be before the first flight of the day from San Francisco arrives. Students who couldn’t find same-day flights that lined up with the motorcoach would have had to take a redeye flight the night before and spend most of the next day waiting in the airport for the motorcoach, likely exhausted. Motorcoaches from Albany airport left at 5:45 p.m., giving students more time to arrive in time to catch the bus, but limiting those of us from the West Coast to just a couple of flight options, all more costly than average and involving early-morning departures and precariously short layovers.
Still, for students from smaller and more distant places, the latest motorcoach is still before the earliest possible flight arrival, leaving them to find their own (pricey!) transportation to Williamstown. For example, the earliest possible arrival into Albany on a connecting flight from Boise, Idaho, is past 9:00 p.m. — after the departure of the latest motorcoach on this year’s schedule.
While the current arrangement of mid-afternoon departures likely works quite well for students from New York, Boston, and their environs, it leaves behind the College’s sizable population of students who come from further away. Indeed, according to the College’s demographic data, 14 percent of students hail from the West Coast, Hawaii, and Alaska and a further 8 percent are international students. Students from the South and Midwest must also fly into New York, Boston, or Albany, before taking the motorcoach the rest of the way to the College.
The College should help out students who travel longer distances by adjusting the schedule of the motorcoach to accommodate flight schedules and allowing more flexibility for motorcoach tickets, to account for the last-minute changes which often occur with more elaborate travel plans.
First, many flights into Albany from major airports — where students from smaller and more distant cities most commonly need to connect — arrive late in the evening, after motorcoaches depart. Between 9:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m., Albany airport receives arrivals from many major airline hubs such as Atlanta, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Detroit, Chicago, and Charlotte, N.C. Flight itineraries from the West Coast and abroad tend to involve connections in these cities, and the longer distances of these trips often necessitate connecting onto the last flight of the night.
If the College offered late-night motorcoach departures from Albany, students from further away would be able to more easily make it back to the College. Similarly, more consistently offering departures in the evening, rather than the afternoon, from New York and Boston would meet the same goal.
Secondly, adding greater flexibility to motorcoach tickets would be especially useful for students whose travel plans are more complex. As evidenced by the number of posts on Williams Students Online seeking to buy and sell motorcoach tickets at the last minute, students often find themselves changing their travel plans closer to the date of travel than the motorcoach ticket deadline, usually several weeks in advance. These circumstances happen more often for those of us whose travel plans involve multiple steps. For instance, I sometimes need to change my motorcoach ticket after I have adjusted my flight plans when a cheaper ticket becomes available.
I have had success changing motorcoach tickets through email, and the staff who run the service have always been helpful and understanding when I have had to adjust a ticket. However, it would be easier for students and staff alike if changes could be made on SARAH and if tickets could be purchased and canceled closer to the date of travel, allowing students to buy them once their plans are more firm.
The changes I suggest are relatively minor — moving the bus schedule a few hours and changing the ticketing policies — but they would make a big difference to students like me who must travel longer distances to get to the College.
Max Billick ’26 is from San Francisco, Calif., and he is the Record’s executive editor for town news.
