Shuttle to Village widens lunch options
A new lunch shuttle from campus to Rice Village for members of the Rice Community opened on Monday and will be piloted throughout the fall.
According to Rice University Transportation Manager Elizabeth Gbordzoe, the transportation office planned the new route during this summer after years of receiving requests from passengers for a direct shuttle to Rice Village in addition to existing shuttles to graduate student apartments.
Currently, there is only one van running on the new route. At the end of the pilot, the transportation office will determine how long and on what level the service will continue. Gbordzoe said the office is optimistic about the outcome, and they hope an increasing number of people will take the shuttle.
Wiess College sophomore Riley Gardell said he does not plan to use the new service personally but thinks it is a good idea.
“It is a great opportunity for those who don’t have their own transportation to get non-servery food throughout the week,” Gardell. “Sometimes it’s hard to wait until Saturday to get decent grub.”
Janice Jean, another freshman from Brown, said tight schedules will be a common problem among students.
“I don’t think I will use it on the weekdays because I am so busy and I have class straight after lunch,” she said. “But I think it’s a good option to have, especially when students don’t have a car but they want to go somewhere convenient to eat.”
Mary D. Brower, a Music Librarian in Fondren Library, said that she hoped this service should have been opened earlier because of the tough parking conditions in Rice Village.
“I think it should have been started earlier,” she said. “The parking conditions there are usually bad and although it is walkable, the weather during lunch time is usually too hot.”
Real time information on the lunch shuttle can be found on the Rice bus tracking app RideSystems. The service hours of the shuttle, which runs from the Recreation Center, are Monday to Friday, 11:30am - 2:30pm, every 15 minutes.
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