The MSU Night Route, which ran for 10 weeks last spring, is set to return Spring 2005.
The nighttime shuttle route began in January to provide a safe, easy mode of transportation from campus to nightspots while trying to reach out to the community, said Student Association President Adam Telle.
The new Night Route will return with a few changes, Telle added. There will no longer be a Miss. Highway 12 route, so both buses will be used to implement a double downtown route, with twice the frequency of stops as last spring.
Telle said this is partially due to the fact that the downtown businesses were more willing to donate money to the shuttle. Even though about 2,000 students used the service to go to Wal-Mart on Highway 12, Telle said Wal-Mart would not donate to the Night Route.
“They (Wal-Mart) said they did not receive much business and some students acted disorderly,” he said.
“The local businesses are more community oriented,” he said. “They support us in everything we do, and they care about students.”
Another reason for the change was that the Highway 12 route took 53 minutes to complete, while the downtown route only took 27 minutes.
“In order to make public transportation work you have to have short intervals between stops,” Telle said. “It just wasn’t very cost effective.”
The SA may decide to run a shuttle one night a week specifically to Wal-Mart via the new bypass, though.
“MSU already provides a Saturday morning shuttle to Wal-Mart,” he added.
Other changes include the addition of apartment complexes to the route, an improved publicity campaign and an improved map.
“I think this is going to be a great thing to connect the University and community more,” said Laurette Clark, assistant chief of staff.
Anyone, whether a student or not, can ride the Night Route as long as they follow the rules, she added.
“It seems like we’re in a great position for something like this because a lot of MSU students, both on and off campus, live in concentrated areas, and the night life is in a pretty concentrated area, which means that it can be served fairly well by a shuttle system,” said Seth Stephenson, SA Executive Assistant.
The system was modeled after NightCAT, the public transportation system at Clemson University, and gave more rides during its first semester-3,000-than NightCAT did, he said.
The Night Route was partly to provide transportation, but it was also a pilot route to see how well public transportation would work in Starkville, Telle said.
Funding for the Night Route comes from the Convention and Visitors’ Bureau and downtown business, he said.
Besides providing transportation to students and business to the downtown area, the Night Route has the potential to prevent drunk driving.
“We expect that once the Night Route really picks up steam, it’ll have a noticeable effect on DUI,” Stephenson said.
But the Night Route will be more than a safe mode of transportation. “I want the Night Route to be something that people ride because the want to, not because they have to,” Telle said. “I want the ride to be just as enjoyable as the destinations.”