Early in the morning at the Hayward BART Station, a long line of students snakes down the sidewalk waiting for a shuttle to take them to their classes at CSU East Bay.

It’s a service provided by the university paid for by the revenue from campus parking tickets, according to the university website. At the moment it is inundated with new riders.

“I have to wait at least three times for the bus to come because there is an extremely long line,” said Jordan Winkelman, a junior at CSUEB who uses the shuttle service daily.

Derek Lobo, manager of Parking and Transportation Service said there are two shuttles that run from Hayward BART to CSUEB every 15 minutes and one from Castro Valley BART every 30 minutes.

However, since the first week of the fall quarter, the line of students echoes with frustration. Many of them have no alternative; they rely on the shuttle to make the four-mile trek to East Bay’s hilltop campus.

“They have a schedule, of course, but usually it’s always 10 to 15 minutes late so you can’t really depend on that,” said Tyler Swanson, freshman at CSUEB.

Lobo said Parking and Transportation is aware of the long lines and customer complaints because the drivers have been keeping track of the number of passengers and conducting periodic reviews of the service.

“Ridership has increased exponentially.”

Lobo said the high demand for the shuttle this quarter prompted the service to add a third shuttle to the route.

The additional shuttle was meant to be a trial period for two weeks but he said that they will most likely make it official.

The CSU Parking and Transportation Services contracts the shuttle service to Trans Metro, an outside agency.  According to Lobo, the vice president and manager makes the decision on which company to use and they are responsible for allocating funds towards different alternative transportation options, such as the shuttle service, Vanpool and Zipcar.

The funding for the alternative transportation budget is collected from parking citations issued on campus, about $225,000 a year, Lobo said.  The money collected from the sale of parking permits is used to maintain parking lots, fund payroll and personnel items.

Jessica Ramirez contributed to this article.