"Safe Ride Home"
According to the eRecord, an electronic newspaper Washington University sends out, they're starting a new "safe ride home" shuttle, which will give anyone with a wash u ID a ride home from the Danforth campus between 7pm and 2:30am, but only if they live in very specific neighborhoods close to campus. I assume this is designed for undergrads who don't have cars, and it seems like a really nice service. Imagine walking to campus and having to stay late to work on something. You'll never have to walk home after dark again! What a relief, especially in cold weather, not to have to wait for the bus or make the trek on foot!
Other than serving as an alternative to walking home, I see the program as indicative of #1 our attitude about cars and public transit in St. Louis, and #2 the culture of fear, this time specifically regarding (largely but not completely) upper-class undergrads and their fear of the communities they live in.
#1--The idea that a 10-passenger van is something you need to come pick you up from campus and carry you home late at night reinforces the idea that the only safe way to get around is a car. That ideally, we would all be able to drive ourselves to class and back home every day. It also feeds the idea that all students wish they had a car to drive; if a student were walking and taking the bus in order to burn less resources in a daily commute, riding home in a 10 passenger van negates any fuel conserved initially by walking. I very much doubt these 10 passenger vans will be full very often, wouldn't it make more environmental sense to at least use smaller cars?
The shuttle is especially a blow to public transit when you compare the areas the "safe ride home" covers with the existing bus routes. Here's a rough map with the safe ride home neighborhoods in blue with various bus routes on it:
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=102675196840780701518.00047f56e7e31077fabad&ll=38.654181,-90.303326&spn=0.024298,0.032959&z=15
You can see that all three areas the ride service serves are well served by bus routes. So, Washington University is providing a van shuttle to take students to the very same places they could get to on the bus with about a five minute walk. The public transit in St. Louis stops running around midnight or one every night, so the shuttle would be the only option after that, but why wouldn't the school push to have the buses run later? I won't even bring up the students that live out of the "safe ride home" zones, let's assume this would be a sort of pilot for a more inclusive program.
Setting up a "Safe ride home" shuttle service that overlaps existing bus lines also implies that taking the bus is not safe! Which brings me back to point number 2.
#2 What's unsafe about the taking the bus or about walking home? By offering this service, Washington University is not only providing it's students with a lazy alternative to taking public transit, but is also sending the message to its students that it's dangerous for them to walk around in their own neighborhoods. You could argue that it's not exactly safe to walk through these areas alone at 2am, yes, but what about 7pm when the service starts? I would hope that a walk home at 7pm would give you a chance to at least smile at a neighbor, and it's not something we should be afraid of. Being aware of what's around you is very important, but I'd argue that walking through your neighborhood is a good way to be aware of it, especially in these areas where you're likely not to be shot.
I understand that someone thinks this is a good idea, and I do think there should be some sort of emergency ride home possibility, but the "safe ride home" just for the sake of going home in a car doesn't solve anything. Instead, the new shuttle is one more method of further isolating Washington University students from the St. Louis neighborhoods they live in.
Information from WUSTL:
http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/20242.aspx