Minutes before the sun rises, hours before his lunch break and a day before tomorrow, Rod Baarstad turns on the red lights of his shuttle and starts a new day.

Slowly cruising through the streets of the University of Arizona campus, he worries about being on time - something he will worry about for the rest of his day.

At 6:30 a.m., Baarstad, a Cat Tran shuttle driver working today on the yellow north express route, pulls up to Lot 9002 on, a UA parking lot at the intersection of East Speedway and North Tucson Boulevards. He is there on time.

"See her, she drives that car and rides with me every morning," Baarstad says as he points his finger to a student coming out of her car, Lora Nelson, a music sophomore.

Through the dawn, Nelson approaches the shuttle, carrying a large trombone case. She sits behind the driver's seat, takes out her trombone and combines the parts of the instrument. Then she places it in her mouth and starts playing it loudly, red light illuminating her facial features.

Five minutes later, across from the Center for Computing and Information Technology building, Nelson gets off the shuttle.

Baarstad continues his ride for 20 minutes until returning to the parking lot. He is on time again, but has 75 more stops to get to. Cat Tran escorts roughly 685 riders a day, 250,000 riders a year. Since the shuttle began in 1987, every ride is free.