No room in the Nite Ride van, sometimes
When UI freshman Allie Meyer tried to get on the Nite Ride van downtown on April 23, she was surprised to hear she wouldn’t be able to get in.
“I had already been waiting 40 minutes,” the 19-year-old Mayflower resident said. “And I was by myself, so it was pretty frustrating.”
Without any open seats on the van, she had the choice to wait another 15 to 20 minutes for the vehicle to make another circuit, or she could find another way home.
“I didn’t want to wait, so I just got a cab instead,” Meyer said.
The UI Nite Ride van service — which began in September 2007 — has seen a steady increase in users since its start, UI police Crime Prevention Specialist Brad Allison said. The service has already topped 10,000 riders, which is viewed as an important milestone to universities employing this type of program.
Recently, however, the number of riders has been so high that in some cases, women such as Meyer must temporarily be turned away.
On April 23, 83 riders used Nite Ride to be picked up from downtown, Allison said. There were 90 the next night, and 89 April 25.
The academic route is also seeing an increase in passengers, he said. There were 61 passengers traveling to and from the Main Library on April 22.
The van has the capacity to carry 15 women at a time; once it reaches that, no more passengers can board.
Allison cites the weather as the main reason for the recent increase.
“Part of it is due to more people finding out about the service through word of mouth,” he said. “But a lot of it is occurring now simply because there are more people out in the nice weather.”
Despite the van sometimes having to turn away would-be riders, Allison said, it is not an extreme safety concern, because the women can stay at the van stop and wait.
“The Nite Ride stops are purposefully at well-lit and crowded areas,” he said.
Although students will not see an immediate solution to the problem, Allison said, Nite Ride will have a new, more spacious van to replace the current van in the fall.
And new UI Student Government President Mike Currie said he hopes to further expand the Nite Ride program next year. This issue was one of Go Party’s 11 platforms in this year’s election.
Although no details have been worked out with Nite Ride representatives yet, Currie said UISG has several thousand dollars from last year’s budget that could potentially be dedicated to a new Nite Ride van, depending on costs.
“Student safety needs to be, and is, one of student government’s top priorities,” he said.
comments powered by Disqus
