VSG survey receives overwhelming student response
More than 1,100 students responded to the Vandy Vans survey last week, providing helpful insight to both Vanderbilt Student Government and the administration in their efforts to improve the overall quality of the program.
Newly elected VSG president Cara Bilotta said she was thrilled with the overwhelming response to the survey.
"I read all 776 written responses and received great constructive feedback," Bilotta said.
A plurality of the respondents, 40.8 percent, were sophomores, and 86.4 percent of total respondents felt Vandy Vans were necessary to ensure the flow of students to and from The Commons and main campus.
General themes from the written response option of the survey included requests for more of the larger vans, additional stops at Sutherland, Crawford, Memorial and East Halls, and including Mondays in the Peabody-Branscomb shuttle.
The administration has reviewed the survey, and Bilotta plans to meet with the Vanderbilt University Police Department in the coming weeks to discuss the feasibility of the student comments.
Bilotta plans to propose the addition of Mondays to the Peabody-Branscomb shuttle this semester due to the large amount of campus and organizational activities and meetings that occur on Mondays.
Other concerns, such as the addition of vans and stops, require more time before they can be enacted.
"Larger issues require incremental change," Bilotta said. "Hopefully over the summer we can begin to make improvements, because we have to take into consideration the cost of the vans, vehicle maintenance, gas prices and the acquisition of new drivers."
The larger issues Bilotta plans to confront include the addition of several more of the larger "Omega" vans, increasing service to 24 hours and creating various new stops at The Commons.
Extra stops were excluded from Peabody this semester due to the construction of new residence halls and concerns about longer route times.
Student respondents to the survey reported that wait times for the vans vary from five to 15 minutes. With the addition of new vans to the route, these times will be cut significantly. Sixty percent of respondents agreed that a wait of five minutes was a reasonable amount of time to expect a van to arrive.
There were also various misconceptions Bilotta wished to clarify.
Several students requested timed schedules for both the express and regular vans, but traffic often makes these schedules impossible to manage.
Currently the regular van arrives at regularly scheduled intervals. Several years ago the Student Government Association and Interhall added the express van, which would operate without a schedule and continue its route, stopping to pick up students only if they were already waiting at the stop. As a result, it is possible for both the regular and express vans to occasionally meet at the same stop.
"I know it's frustrating to see the express and regular vans back-to-back at times. Unfortunately, because of the differences in travel between the two vans, that will occasionally happen," Bilotta said.
Another misconception concerned the revival of the reverse route to speed up travel times. A reverse route was tested years ago when Vandy Vans was conceived as SafeTrips. However, the reverse route actually took longer due to all the left-hand turns on the route.
"It's not to say we can't try to revive the reverse route, but my gut instinct is that it's not likely the route will be successful," Bilotta said.
Although students proposed the addition of a downtown route last year, Bilotta found less than 1 percent demand for such a route.
"If anything, we had a few requests for adding Sportsman's as a stop," she said.
In all, Bilotta said she found the feedback from the poll invaluable.
"I hope when issues appear in the future that students will be equally as responsive as they have been for the Vandy Vans survey," Bilotta said.
