Katie Kwon’s trip home for Spring Break did not begin promisingly.
While leaving her dorm, the Weinberg freshman realized she had forgotten her boarding pass. After sprinting back up and down five flights of stairs, she still managed to catch the 11:30 a.m. Associated Student Government shuttle service from Cahn Auditorium to O’Hare International Airport. From there, things went much more smoothly.
“I felt like an idiot because I had my suitcase and was running,” Kwon said. “I was scared that I was going to miss the bus because they stressed on the Web site that they would leave on time whether everyone was there or not.”
Kwon and about 250 other Northwestern students used the $10 shuttle service during its pilot run, said Weinberg senior and service co-founder Tim Wright.
The bus service ran on Thursday, Friday and Saturday of Finals Week five times per day with at travel time of about 45 minutes, Wright said. He said the buses, which could hold between 50 and 60 people, never had more than 40 students per trip.
Kwon said she would definitely be interested in using the service again if it were offered.
“Not only did the departure time from Cahn work out well with my flight, but it was also cheap and convenient,” she said.
The shuttle service was born from another ASG initiative, RideShare, which helped students coordinate sharing cabs or airport vans to lower their cost of traveling to O’Hare. The idea to use buses had been floating around ASG since Fall Quarter, said service co-founder Tommy Smithburg.
“RideShare was a good system,” the Weinberg junior said. “However, it’s more difficult in that you have to coordinate it yourself, sign up on the Web site and hope that the other student or students show up so you don’t get hit with a full fare.”
For the shuttle service, students could either go online or to the Norris Box Office to purchase a ticket. There was no physical ticket; instead, students checked in with an ASG volunteer “gatekeeper” upon arrival at the bus.
Smithburg estimated that the flat rate saved those who rode the shuttle a combined total of $15,000. However, not enough students took advantage of the service for ASG to make a profit.
“I guess the market for it was just a little overestimated,” Smithburg said. “As of now, it looks like we lost between $300 and $400”
The future of the shuttle service is questionable, since the initiative didn’t break even, Smithburg said.
However, Wright said he hopes the group will continue the service and work on recruiting more volunteers to work the buses.
“It’s important to remember that it’s a pilot initiative, and we have RideShare to fall back on if this doesn’t work out,” he said. “More people know about it and trust it now, so hopefully if we do it Spring Quarter we’ll improve on the number of students using it.”
