ASU Downtown students can now take the campus shuttle service to Safeway on Sundays in an effort put forth by Undergraduate Student Government Downtown to increase student access to groceries and expand on last year’s weeknight route.
The Sun Devil Express’ Sunday route, which kicked off this week, takes students from the Taylor Place dorms and Roosevelt Point apartment complex to Safeway at McDowell Road and Fifth Street, said USGD Vice President of Policy Ryan Boyd.
“This helps (students) have more options,” Boyd said. “One of the biggest complaints we always hear is food options here are either too expensive or there’s just not enough of them, so giving them a little bit of a push up, to make their own, have what they want at Safeway, is a huge benefit.”
The Sunday shuttle picks up students on the south side of Taylor Place every 20 minutes from 1-6 p.m., stopping at Roosevelt Point before arriving at Safeway. Students only need their university ID to use the service.
This week’s Sunday shuttle saw 33 riders total, Boyd said.
“Sunday was definitely successful, in my opinion,” he said. “A lot of people were telling us that they actually liked it and wanted to do more of it. So there was a lot of good feedback for the Sunday route.”
Rachel McKay, a senior and criminology major at ASU, was one of the 33 students who used the service to get to Safeway. She said she plans to use the shuttle again.
“It is so convenient for me, even though I’m living off campus,” she said. “I live just a few blocks from the Taylor Place stop, and I don’t have a car, so this is an easy alternative.”
Getting students to use the service is a priority for USGD because of its price tag, Boyd said. The shuttle service, provided by Dunn Transportation, costs $55 per hour. USGD is authorized to pay up to $36,150 total for an entire year of the service.
“I’m testing a lot of this just to make sure that we’re spending the money right,” Boyd said. “I’m very conscious because of last year’s incident of it not working well.”
Last year’s shuttle, the Sun Devil Safety Trolley, faced funding concerns when few students used the service. It ran Monday through Thursday to locations near campus to help students reach their destinations safely. That service will be returning this year, renamed the Sun Devil Express with the additional Sunday route.
Related: USGD introduces Sun Devil Safety Trolley connecting ASU parking lots to Taylor Place
USGD President Corina Tapscott said this year’s goal was to expand the service to make it more flexible for students.
“This year it isn’t focusing on a response to safety, but it’s actually focusing on any transportation needs our students have,” Tapscott said. “So that could be, they need to get to parking and it’s late and they need a ride over there … it could be they need groceries on Sunday, it could be they need to go to Mercado and they don’t want to make that long trek.”
The weeknight shuttle starts at Mercado, a collection of ASU office and classroom spaces on Van Buren and Fifth streets, then goes to the School of Nursing, the parking lot on McKinley and First streets, the Walter Cronkite School and University Center, and the parking lots on Second, Third, and Fourth avenues before returning to Mercado.
USGD distributed surveys to students over the summer to gauge what students needed from transportation, including the possibility of transit via golf cart.
The survey’s goal was to “figure out what their need was, to see what the best route was to go because we were looking at a couple different services,” USGD Vice President of Services Kat Hofland said. “And so with that information, we sort of figured out the direction that we wanted to move.”
Related: USGD survey requests student feedback for new around-campus golf cart transit option
USGD also discussed and researched the best ways to implement the service, Tapscott said.
“A lot of what I did over the summer was work with staff, make sure that we were working with the best company possible because we wanted to find that one that was cost-effective but still at the quality of the service and the type of service that students wanted,” Tapscott said.
In addition to meeting student transportation needs, Tapscott said she hopes students will use the service — particularly the Sunday route — to explore the local area.
“I’m hoping students will utilize it actually to access Roosevelt Row, because we’re really into supporting all the local businesses we have,” she said. “So we’re hoping that they’ll take it to Roosevelt Point and then just walk to Roosevelt Row.”
Tapscott said if students want to make any changes to the route, such as having it stop directly at Roosevelt Row, they should let USGD know on its website.
Contact the reporter at lallnatt@asu.edu.
