If you’re stuck without a ride around the campus area, have no fear, because the Dial-a-Ride shuttle bus would be happy to give you a lift around its brand new route.
“Right now we have a year and a half contract that will go until next May of 2016, and we’ll see how it works out,” said Dawn Fuller, manager at Dial-a-Ride.
The Dial-A-Ride shuttle service was brought into the Ferris community while the University Center was being renovated.
“Last year Ferris contacted us, wanting to do a route,” said Fuller. “That definitely was our foot in the door. Last year we had over 75,000 students ride on the route alone. This year, in this past fall, we’ve probably had about 24 or 25,000 students ride, and with this last week just with the new route are numbers are still over one hundred a day.”
The service will be paid for by the University, so rides will be free.
“It’s free to anybody that would like to ride,” said Fuller. “You don’t have to be a student, you could be a senior citizen who wants to go for a joyride.”
The shuttle runs Monday through Friday. Monday through Thursday it runs from 7:30 a.m. until 7 p.m. and on Fridays, the shuttle will be available from 7:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. It does a continuous loop around the campus area, with nine stops.
“It will be a deviated route,” said Fuller. “Basically, let’s say if somebody wanted to go to the Birkam Health Center and they’re really sick and can’t get there, we can deviate off our route. We can get them to the Birkam Health Center, and then jump right back into our loop again.”
Fuller said that the deviated route will be for areas that are close to campus, and the regular loop takes about twenty minutes to complete. The nine marked stops for the shuttle will include commuter lot 28 behind McDonald’s, the Allied Health parking lot, the West Campus Community Center, behind the ice area, lot 4, The Rock Café, the Student Rec Center, the north side of the University Center, and then the Arts and Sciences Commons.
Another extremely noteworthy and helpful feature of this service is that anyone can also see exactly where the shuttle is at any time in its route by visiting www.bigrapids.doublemap.com/map, a tracking site for the bus. The app for Doublemap is also available on the App Store on Google Play, so one could check on their smartphone to see if the shuttle is close to them and know when to head to the nearest stop.
“We are here to provide public transportation,” said Fuller on the shuttle service. “We wanted to see how many students would actually use it, and try to encourage them to use public transportation, not only here but in their lifestyles afterwards.”