New shuttles ease CUMC, MoHi transit

Traveling around Columbia’s campus just got a little bit easier—and Public Safety officers may have more time on their hands.

Public Safety has made major changes to Columbia’s evening transportation system, shifting from a system where students could call for a pick-up from their specific location to a scheduled shuttle bus system. According to Public Safety spokesperson Dan Held, the changes were a result of concerns that the previous system was an inefficient way of serving Columbia and the neighborhood.
The new service “keeps Public Safety resources on patrol, which helps keep the entire community safe,” Held said.

Columbia’s Director of Transportation Miguel Pagan agreed that old system was “pulling resources” from campus in a way the shuttle buses, with a fixed staff, would not.

Those two shuttle buses will now travel on separate routes throughout Morningside Heights and Manhattanville, making 30-minute loops.

The evening shuttle wasn’t the only system that saw changes this fall.

The Intercampus Shuttle, which connects the Morningside campus with the Medical Center, Manhattanville buildings, and Harlem Hospital Center was also restructured—and students can now see where the individual buses are at any point in time.

Those shuttle buses will now adhere to a fixed schedule and will run more frequently, due to the addition of a third shuttle bus. A new vendor was chosen because it has a smartphone app available that allows users to check where buses are in real time. Pagan said he hopes the tracking system can help students account for bad-weather delays.

The number of departures has already increased to 302 per day, compared to 254 departures per day last semester, according to Honey Sue Fishman, executive director of student center operations.

That’s a big contrast, Pagan said, from the previous service which was “stop and go” and had “no rhythm to it.”

Fishman said that the revamping of the system was part of a larger review of shuttle buses that addressed other issues, such as how many students don’t even know where to find the shuttles.

University Senator Mi Wang led the push for reform of the Intercampus Shuttle to help students engaged in interdisciplinary studies.

“We realize academic research works in a different way, it’s only natural people ask for an enhanced intercampus system,” she said.

Many students sad they were indifferent to the changes to the Morningside shuttles, since they rarely left a small area surrounding campus. But Apoorv Agarwal, GSAS ’12, said the new routes would have made his life much easier when he lived 15 minutes away from campus, near Central Park. He said he often felt unsafe making the walk back home late at night—he even got roughed up during one trip—and so he would frequently call for a shuttle.

“It was unpredictable, it would come half an hour late or something,” Agarwal said. “Now I could come home around the [scheduled] times.”

jackie.carrero@columbiaspectator.com