BSOS Representative Amna Farooqi listens to College Park city councilmembers speak on Wednesday, October 30, 2013.
After a weekend grocery shuttle pilot program last semester failed to attract interest, the SGA voted last week to spend almost $5,000 on another pilot program for the spring semester.
Last semester, the Student Government Association’s 4-week pilot program cost $2,880 and 114 students used the service. Department of Transportation Services officials said they can’t justify supporting the program with those numbers, but SGA officials said the numbers aren’t an accurate depiction of student interest and because the service wasn’t well advertised, the SGA is trying again.
“If it was a pilot we were running, the cost per rider would tell us it would not be something we could continue,” said David Allen, DOTS director.
Amna Farooqi, a behavioral and social sciences college representative who sponsored last week’s grocery shuttle bill, said the SGA launched the pilot program too late in the semester to get a strong enough response and proper advertisement.
Last semester’s program ran on Saturdays and Sundays for the final four weeks of the semester. But under the new pilot program, one shuttle will run every Sunday in the spring from noon to 4 p.m. It will service South Campus Commons, Courtyards and Greek life and Leonardtown communities, letting out at the Target and Giant on Greenbelt Road.
Even if it’s only for a few hours every Sunday, the idea of having such a service is exciting, said William Sama, a senior mechanical engineering major. Sama, who lives in Allegany Hall, said he would use the service.
“I get tired of eating the food at the diner,” he said. “You have the same food over and over again.”
The shuttle might stop by The Varsity and University View apartments, Farooqi said. The SGA is also considering altering the program to accommodate city residents.
The SGA allocated a total of $4,975 for the shuttle, its driver, routine maintenance and advertising — significantly more than the SGA usually spends directly on behalf of students, said Josh Ratner, SGA student affairs vice president. During the meeting Wednesday, several legislators raised concerns about the cost.
“There’s not a large amount of precedent for spending this amount of money on a student initiative,” Ratner said.
The SGA has the rest of this semester to advertise the service, Farooqi said, and the cost is lower than it could have been. Unlike the first pilot program, officials negotiated with DOTS for a lower charter cost: about $55 an hour per shuttle, compared to the standard $72 an hour. DOTS has also agreed to advertise the service on its website and include wait times for the shuttle through the NextBus service.
The grocery shuttle will not become a permanent DOTS-run route yet, though, Allen said. There is no room in the DOTS budget to pay for a new shuttle route, and any funding would have to come from a student fee increase.
But neither a fee increase nor continued funding from the SGA after the spring is optimal, officials said. Ratner said a fee increase isn’t fair to students or the SGA, though the program’s survival will depend on finding a permanent source of funding.
“If DOTS can’t pay for it, then DOTS can’t pay for it,” Farooqi said. “This is a service students need, and if SGA has the money, SGA should pay for it.”
