Students choosing to use campus shuttles instead of trekking across campus may have noticed two changes this year: a younger driver and a shorter route.
Manager of Parking and Shuttle Services for the past six years Aaron Kane said shuttle services started hiring student drivers halfway through last academic year.
There are nine student drivers this year, which is roughly a quarter of all drivers at shuttle services.
The jobs are posted through Student Employment Services, and all students need to apply is a valid driver’s license with no points.
“A lot of transportation options in the area struggle with drivers because it’s part-time, and we have this entire campus full of potential employees,” Kane said.
Parking and Shuttle Services looked at the setups of equivalent departments at Ohio State University and in Iowa, finding that Iowa’s shuttle services department was founded through students.
Once students are hired to drive shuttles at the University, they must get a commercial driver’s license. Parking and Shuttle Services pays for the on-site training, and all students have to pay for is the final test.
“There were times we had to turn away campus requests” for charter shuttles, but now there are less turn downs, Kane said.
The Shuttle Services Department also gets a new bus every one and a half to two years, and the newest one is a student design.
“Students have made a positive impact on this operation…we really try to utilize our student population because it’s for them,” he said.
Additionally, a new Falcon Express route was added this year, which cuts the 22 to 24 minutes a full loop takes on the Orange Main Route to 12 to 14 minutes.
Amanda Dortch, Undergraduate Student Government president, said the complaint she heard was it takes an hour to get around campus, but the Falcon Express route is “quick, fast and to the point.”
“The conversation is always about what can we do,” she said.
Dortch said it’s important to make sure students are getting to classes and events on time. It’s also important for students to learn intensive new skills, which student employment helps with.
Kane said an undergraduate student came to him with several discussion topics, and one of them was the shorter route.
“The more I thought about it the more I thought that would really benefit us on campus,” he said.
To make the route happen, one of the two buses on the Orange Main route was moved to the new Falcon Express route.
“It improved the efficiency of the shuttle department and our ability to get students around campus quickly and efficiently” without increasing the financial burden, Kane said.
He said the last time a shuttle route was changed was roughly three years ago when on route was adjusted to go to Meijer because ridership was low on the one that went downtown.
Kane said he is always open to suggestions on ways to improve the service.
