Students traveling home via San Francisco International and Mineta San Jose International airports for summer vacation will have an additional option for transportation to the airport, as the ASSU is set to expand its shuttle service to include spring quarter.
After partnering with Super Shuttle, the shuttle service will cost $13, down from the winter break rate of $15, and students will be able to purchase tickets online via the ASSU website.
“In terms of major changes for the shuttle service: one, the cost is going down for the tickets; two, more students are using it; three, we’re being more sustainable and four, we’re expanding the services so it doesn’t just operate during winter but also during spring,” said Ernestine Fu ’13, the executive director of the ASSU Student Services Division (SSD), which operates the shuttle.
The 2009-10 winter break’s shuttle service posted an approximate $2,000 loss, despite the fact that tickets were $16, but several steps have been taken to make it profitable again. These steps include operating the shuttle under SSD and hiring a director for the program.
“Normally, the shuttle service is a little disorganized, in that it’s under ASSU as a whole, so you have the executive presidents and VPs trying to run it,” Fu said. “Now it’s been shifted to the Student Services Division under more scalable projects like the Stanford Concert Network, Student-Initiated Courses and the Wellness Room.”
This winter break’s partnership with Super Shuttle also increased cost efficiency, as buses are now being replaced with cars and vans.
“The main problem in a bus with fifty seats is it doesn’t fill up,” Fu said.
“This was the first time we used cars and vans,” she said. “Pretty much they all filled up.”
The changes have resulted in financial gains for the ASSU. Fu said “a little over 300 students” purchased tickets for last winter break, resulting in the first profitable season for the shuttle.
She said numbers published in January indicated that 362 riders had generated $5,340 in revenue, more than compensating for the ASSU’s $5,112 in costs.
“The shuttle service operates at zero dollars right now for ASSU, except we have a shuttle service director who we pay a stipend in order to help manage the logistics, and we have a couple interns working on the project,” Fu said.
The decision to expand the program to include summer transfers was the product of increased personnel attention as well as positive student feedback from winter break.
“Students were thanking us, because they thought the winter break shuttle service operated very smoothly,” she said. “People actually emailed me after the winter break shuttle service asking if we could provide tickets from the airport back to campus after break.”
Furthermore, SSD is taking steps to make the service more sustainable. In addition to the buses-to-vans transition, Fu said this summer’s operations would be entirely paperless. All marketing will be done online via the ASSU website and social media such as Facebook. Ticket sales, meanwhile, will be operated via eGroups and the SSD website. Bookings for the shuttle open today.