Matt Mitgang | Student Life

Students board the Campus2Home shuttle late Tuesday night. Operating hours of the service have been expanded to 6 p.m.—4 p.m.

Starting Monday, the shuttle began nightly service at 6 p.m. and made its last trip at 4 a.m. Prior to the change, the hours were 7 p.m. to 2:30 a.m.

The Campus2Home vans provide a safe ride home from the Danforth Campus for those who live in four off-campus areas: Skinker-DeBaliviere, Loop South, north of the Loop and south of campus.

“We determined that we would try the earlier hour, especially during daylight savings time to account for the fact that it’s getting darker earlier,” said Nick Stoff, director of Parking and Transportation Services. “In part, the later hours were to assist with grad students who, as we all know, do not always have prime time for research and their work on campus, which typically happens later in the evening.”

The decision was made by a committee created to evaluate the program. This committee consists of Stoff, Associate Vice Chancellor for Operations Steve Hoffner, Police Chief Don Strom, faculty, staff and undergraduate and graduate students.

According to Stoff, these new hours are temporary, and the committee will re-evaluate the program over spring break. The expansion of the shuttle service hours should not make the program more expensive because summertime and holiday schedule adjustments will compensate for the added hours of operation.

“I think it will be more convenient,” junior Hillary Black said. “I definitely do think that [the shuttle] is very good since I am on campus until very late almost every night and use the shuttle mostly after midnight or 1 a.m.”

In October, approximately six to seven people used the Campus2Home shuttle each hour after 1 a.m.

“We’re not sure what the usage will be, [but] there were certainly some requests for it,” Stoff said. “It fluctuates depending on what time of the year and how close we are to finals. We will continue to monitor the ridership.”

The shuttle leaves from Mallinckrodt Center every 30 minutes and makes a stop at the Brookings Drive steps. Campus2Home takes passengers the front doors of their buildings, and the shuttle driver waits for the passengers to enter their buildings safely.

Following the rape and robbery of a female undergraduate leaving campus, the University has expanded its door-to-door shuttle service for students living in off-campus housing.

Known as Campus2Home (C2H), the shuttle’s vans leave from Mallinckrodt Center and Brookings Drive every half-hour and take students directly to their residences off-campus rather than operating along a fixed route.

The University’s decision to expand the shuttle service was overshadowed on Monday by some students’ concerns that a reference to the Campus2Home program in the e-mail with the crime alert created the impression that the student raped early Monday morning was partially at fault for the attack.

Although the decision to expand Campus2Home was made at the same time that the University chose to send out a campus-wide alert, that e-mail did not include a reference to the expanded service.

Steve Givens, associate vice chancellor for public affairs, acknowledged that the decision to promote Campus2Home without mentioning the expansion was “a mistake,” but the additional coverage remains an important service to students.

“We included in the crime alert that Campus2Home was available; what we didn’t do is include that there was an expansion,” Givens said. “In the rush to get that statement out, it could have been worded better.”

Junior Danielle Wallis, co-president of the Committee Organized for Rape Education, stressed that references to the shuttle should not overwhelm the fact that the incident occurred because of choices made by the attacker, not the victim—a reality often overshadowed in mainstream understandings of sexual assault.

“It’s less an issue about how the crime alert was worded and more about how we read it,” she said. “There’s nothing blameful about what she did,” Wallis said.

Previously, the Campus2Home program was available only to students, faculty and staff living in neighborhoods north of campus—specifically University City and Skinker-DeBaliviere.

On Monday evening, shuttles began to serve neighborhoods south of campus, particularly the DeMun area where the assault occurred. The additional service is in direct response to that incident.

“We had a very tragic event,” Givens said, and that provided an impetus to reconsider how best to serve the needs of students.

“Something like this happens, and it’s good to reflect,” he said.

Campus2Home service is now available in the area between Forsyth Boulevard and Clayton Road, from Skinker to Big Bend, in addition to the neighborhoods north of campus that were previously available. In addition, after the robbery of two undergraduate students Wednesday morning on the Greenway Walkway just north of the campus overpass, the shuttle hours were extended from 7 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. seven days a week.

When the service first began in February, the University chose to focus its efforts on neighborhoods north of campus because of the concentration of students and University-owned off-campus property in the area.

Until now, the service has remained relatively unknown, operating far below its capacity. According to Steve Hoffner, associate vice chancellor for operations, approximately 20 students use the service each night and use has been approximately evenly divided between graduate and undergraduate students.

The service has the potential to serve up to 192 riders throughout each night—two 12 passenger vans make a total of 16 trips.

“[Ridership] is good, but we have capacity for lots more than that,” Givens said. “It’s great for students to learn that this is available and make use of it whether they are going north or south.”

Late Monday evening, the first night of expanded service, 43 individuals rode the shuttle, none traveling to the newly served area south of campus.

According to Hoffner, the yearly operating cost of the shuttle is $230,000, but even if ridership continues to lag behind capacity, the program will continue.

“My personal opinion is that now that we’ve started this program it’s going to be staying,” Hoffner said. “I don’t foresee at all that this won’t be available next fall.”

The service is scheduled to continue throughout the summer, though the University is currently conducting surveys that will determine whether a new set of summer hours will be developed.

First, in terms of money, though the University pays Metro less than the $145 per pass than other students in the region pay for their passes, the administration pays based on how many people are on campus, not how many actually request them. Therefore, Metro receives payment for the one-quarter to one-third of those eligible for U-Passes who do not request their passes. Moreover, Metro now receives more money from the University community than before the U-Pass program, because drastically fewer Washington University community members used transit before the program began.

Though some feel that the University would evade paying the proposed sales tax to fund transit in St. Louis County, while the administration doesn’t, the individual members of the community will be paying this tax.

Money aside, the U-Pass program is important to the city and is certainly not a new idea. The University of Missouri-St. Louis was the first St. Louis school to offer a U-Pass program, though they do charge students a fee for the passes. Southwestern Illinois College also used to participate in the program. In Pittsburgh, several large universities have a similar arrangement with the local transit agency Port Authority. Students ride free on public buses and are able to access local attractions and cultural institutions and bring capital and foot traffic to neighborhoods across the city.

By maintaining the U-Pass program at Washington University, we keep students, faculty and staff connected to city attractions, jobs, their homes and other universities. This connectedness keeps the region alive, and will continue to bring bright minds to the University and throughout the city.

Louis is a freshman in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at louisliss@wustl.edu.

The St. Louis Metro Operations and Strategic Planning Committee will consider the proposal.

If no cuts are made, Metro will lose $50 million in the 2010 fiscal year. As part of the cuts, Metro will lay off 600 workers, about one quarter of its staff, and will reduce service in some areas. The cuts, if approved, will take effect March 30.

Senior Vice President of Transit Operations Ray Friem said that the cuts are expected to result in 9.5 million fewer boardings. With the resulting reduced revenue from fares, the fares do not give Metro a way to sustain itself beyond the next fiscal year, he said.

Under the plan, bus service would be cut by 44 percent, MetroLink service by 32 percent and Call-a-Ride service by 15 percent. In addition, service to west and south St. Louis County will be cut, as will service outside of I-270. Cuts include the elimination or reduction of certain routes.

Specific time schedules will be made available later in January.

Fares were increased at the beginning of January and will be raised again in July to make up some of the revenue, but existing sales tax revenues are expected to drop due to the current economic recession.

Nick May, a sophomore from the St. Louis area, said that he doesn’t think further attempts to raise taxes to fund Metro will be successful.

“I feel like Proposition M should have been passed, but that’s just me. If that didn’t get approved, I don’t think any other taxes are going to pass since the increase in Proposition M wasn’t that much. I know there’s a lot of people who use the Metro, but there’s also many more that don’t, so [supporters] are outnumbered countywide,” he said.

While some students, such as May, have vehicles of their own, several students and staff at the University rely on Metro’s two MetroLink stops on campus and MetroBus for transportation.

“I’m not really worried about [the service cuts] for myself since I have a car that I can use if I need it. A lot of other people rely on the Metro, and I know it will affect them,” May said.

Initially, planners intended to reduce costs by ending MetroLink service after 8 p.m. Because the plan met opposition at public hearings held prior to the 2008 election, the proposals now include service at night.

Many students rely on public transportation to travel between the Danforth Campus and the medical campus for research, jobs and classes.

Sophomore Jenny Lee said that she and several of her classmates use the MetroLink to travel between the campuses as part of her Pediatric Emergency Medicine Research Associates’ Program class. Lee said that cutting hours would have created problems for students who take shifts later at night.

“I’ve done shifts that end at 8 or 10 [p.m.]. Normally people without cars take an earlier shift, but sometimes only late shifts are available. [Cutting hours] would limit the available times they could use,” Lee said.

Assistant Vice Chancellor for Sustainability Matt Malten explains that Washington University has been cooperating with Metro.

“We’re not expecting to have a full understanding of what the cuts to the Metro service will be until March or April, so at this time all the transportation elements in our transportation plan remain the same, but we are very closely watching what is going on,” Malten said. “We have already been working really closely with Metro to try and minimize the impact as much as we can for students and as well for our faculty and staff.”

Due to the lack of communication regarding the construction on the South 40, there are only two plausible ways of walking to campus. One route is between JKL and Lee and the other route is all the way around the Wohl Parking Garage. The first method is very dangerous, filled with puddles and freshmen, while the second route makes me understand how it felt to go from New York to California before the Panama Canal was built. The first few days of classes were not conducive to trekking, and the sweltering heat at 10 in the morning made my journey feel more grueling than Frodo’s. I still feel that Clayco should have left a path from the Wohl Center to the Clocktower open.

My experiences with bicycles this semester have not been good. My suitemate’s bike is nothing short of a death trap. Due to lack of maintenance (and usage), the back brakes were nonfunctional, the seat was loose, the tires were flat and the front wheel was pulling to the right. I nearly died the first time I rode it. I was wise enough to leave it alone.

The final method I chose to use was the campus circulator. My experiences with that have been nothing short of terrifying, hilarious and maddening. On some occasions, the driver tries to eliminate the waiting time delay per stop, and you’d better get out of the way in those moments. It does not matter what race, gender or disabilities you have; pray you can jump out of the way in time.

Last year, my friend and I were riding the bus, and the driver rocketed around the turn from Wallace Drive into the Mallinckrodt parking lot. Two poor students had the misfortune of not walking on the sidewalk. The driver came up from behind and honked his horn menacingly. One of the kids probably had to change his pants, and the other exhibited “deer in the headlights” characteristics. On another occasion, it was a bitter winter morning and there was a long line at the Clocktower. Kids were frozen, praying for the campus circulator. He came a little earlier, but kids gratefully clambered aboard. All the kids had boarded, and we noticed a kid on crutches limping toward the bus. Guess what happened next. Bus driver invoked the Pirates’ Rule: Those who fall behind get left behind. The kid started to move faster but was left in the snow. I can’t help laughing as I write this, but it did suck to be that kid that time.

A note to the freshmen: Wash. U. is not a large campus, but when it is snowing and two degrees below zero, your dorm seems like miles away. In general, I suggest using bikes as the best method of transportation. Walking isn’t bad if you aren’t in a rush, but if you are really late or if it is raining, take a deep breath and pray the campus circulator stops for you.

Oh, and remember to register to vote.