One night in January, community service office supervisor Edward Eisen realized he had only one driver to run the Evening Van Service ““ rather than the normal four that usually drove around campus.
So he decided to try something new.
Instead of picking up students and driving them around a fixed route, the drivers, including Eisen, ignored stops where they rarely picked up students and only went to the more visited stops. From there, they drove directly to the passengers’ intended locations.
“We had to throw caution to the wind,” said Eisen, a fourth-year history student. “I was just trying to get through the night.”
But to Eisen’s surprise, the van service was still able to pick up and drop off as many students as it normally could along its fixed route.
After the success of the emergency measures, CSO manager Matt Ellis decided to follow Eisen’s example. Last month, the van service began to take passengers directly to their destinations in place of its normal route.
The van now only stops at the most-visited locations of De Neve turnaround, Ackerman turnaround, Bunche Hall, Murphy Hall and the corner of Hilgard and Manning avenues, Ellis said. Under the old system, students picked up at Rolfe Hall would be driven down the route down to Parking Structure 32 and then to the apartments, when in fact they wanted to go to Hedrick Hall, Ellis said. Now, they can be taken there directly.
Students at one of the stops along the old route can still be picked up by calling the van services dispatch. The caller, however, must already be at the pickup location when making the call, Ellis said.
The lack of drivers on shifts was related to Class B driver’s licenses. Drivers were required to have the Class B license to drive the van on a fixed route, Ellis said, but the process of acquiring one is extremely time-consuming.
By eliminating the fixed route, drivers are no longer required to have a Class B license.
“We can get people in faster and then get the Class B licenses after the fact,” Ellis said.
The CSO still prefers drivers to have Class B licenses either way, because it implies a greater level of training and safety consciousness, Ellis said.
Passenger Danielle Griffin, a second-year global studies and environmental/geography student, said she thought the new system was more efficient because it did not require the van to go all the way around campus. But while the ride was quicker on the new route, she said she still had to wait a long time to get picked up.
Emily Shenfield, a fourth-year theater student, said she enjoys being able to call the van services to pick her up, but that on some occasions she was picked up quickly but at other times she was not so lucky.
Eisen said he believes the service works to serve people a lot quicker. With a full crew, the wait should not take more than 10 to 15 minutes, he said.