The university is halting its Terp Taxi service starting Sept. 20 and shifting vehicles from the program to help bolster NITE Ride in the wake of last week’s reported sexual assaults.
Director of Transportation Services David Allen made the announcement yesterday at a public safety meeting called to disseminate information to students on measures the university is taking to step up security. The meeting was held in the Colony Ballroom in Stamp Student Union.
Allen said the student wait times for NITE Ride services should be reduced with the addition of two mini buses previously used for Terp Taxi. He added that one of the new buses will solely cover the downtown area where the Peeping Tom incidents and assaults have been occurring.
“We’re going to have a vehicle specifically for the downtown College Park area,” Allen said. “Anyone who calls in that particular area, starting the 20th, will have a designated vehicle.”
Four students were fondled or attacked early Thursday morning by a suspect who entered their homes while they slept, an incident police are speculating may be an escalation of Peeping Tom incidents that occurred in the same downtown area over the last school year.
Allen said ordinarily NITE Ride responds to 86 percent of all calls within 15 minutes and the average wait time for a pickup is nine minutes and 26 seconds.
“Two percent are over 15 minutes,” Allen said.
Allen said two weeks after Sept. 20 he will reevaluate whether the Terp Taxi service should resume.
“There’s a particular population that likes that [Terp Taxi] service,” Allen said, referring to a population of 80 to 90 students that regularly use Terp Taxi.
One student in attendance Monday raised the concern that NITE Ride does not respond to students looking to be picked up near university bus routes, echoing a concern that has been raised about the service.
Allen responded that “NITE Ride supplements our fixed [bus] routes.”
Under the current system, Terp Taxi offers transportation to students who do not wish to use the university’s fixed bus routes for a fee of $5 per student.
“The service operates from 5:30 p.m. to 3 a.m., Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays within a fourth-mile radius of campus,” according to the university’s Department of Transportation Services evening services guide.
NITE Ride runs every night from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 a.m. in the same boundaries as university bus routes. The service “is designed to serve the areas of campus that are not included on the evening service routes,” according to the guide.
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