The Georgetown University Student Association is working with the Department of Public Safety and the Office of Facilities and Student Housing to implement the installation of GPS trackers in university transport vehicles.
While the initiative is in its early stages, GUSA is looking to partner with DoubleMap, a provider of GPS tracking technology. The objective is to place devices in all GUTS and Safe-Rides vehicles so that students can track the location of these services via a website or smartphone application.
“What is so attractive about this is that it helps to solve a lot of problems in one initiative,” GUSA Vice President Greg Laverriere (COL ’12) said.
DoubleMap has worked with transportation shuttles at Indiana University and Butler University in Indiana and has offered to implement the technology at Georgetown free of charge.
Laverriere added that GPS tracking would lessen the time DPS takes to inform students about SafeRides schedules and to dispatch vehicles while also serving as a way to increase student use of the free transportation.
“If I’m in a bar on M Street or in a movie theater, I could use the GPS system to figure out when to leave. … It decreases the number of students walking back late at night, decreasing noise,” Laverriere said.
The program is the latest in a series of GUSA transportation initiatives. Earlier this year, GUSA partnered with the university to add a third neighborhood shuttle on M Street from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m., Thursday through Saturday nights. This Friday, GUSA will also reintroduce a program that allows GUSA members to drive SafeRides vans.
Though the plan was initially put in place by former GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) and Vice President Jason Kluger (MSB ’11) in 2009, various logistical and administrative hurdles have delayed the initiative’s implementation this semester.
The initiative will have one GUSA member drive one van per weekend, though GUSA is looking to expand the program with the ultimate goal of institutionalizing SafeRides as a fully student-run service.
A GUSA work-study program that would allow non-GUSA members to serve as student drivers is also in the works, though GUSA President Mike Meaney (SFS ’12) stressed that the particulars of the project are still being hammered out.
These initiatives would further a growing trend of upgrading Georgetown’s late-night transportation services in order to alleviate noise on weekends.
“The M Street shuttle is one of several initiatives the university is investing in to maintain the quality of life in the neighborhoods around campus,” university spokeswoman Stacy Kerr wrote in an email.
According to Kerr, the shuttle has seen 8,977 riders to date, averaging roughly 309 students per day.
Jake Sticka (COL ’13), the Georgetown student representative on the Advisory Neighborhood Commission, added that the M Street shuttle has been well received by the surrounding community.
Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E Chair Ron Lewis was less certain about the effectiveness of the M Street shuttle in reducing noise and rowdiness in the neighborhood.
“I’m gathering data now from everyone in the community,” he said.
