Stingerette cancels off-campus services

Parking and Transportation has limited the use of the Stingerette service to campus boundaries beginning this semester. The change was only announced on the department's website.

The Stingerette, once considered to be a means of transportation to areas near campus after midnight, will now operate within a well-defined area. It will take students to areas on campus, including graduate apartments, but will no longer take students to Home Park, the Midtown MARTA Station or any other location outside of Tech.

Rosalind Meyers, associate vice president of Auxiliary Services, said that Parking and Transportation lacks the resources to provide an off-campus transportation service.

"Everybody has limited resources, and we want to provide good service. The farther we go off campus, the longer it takes to get on campus," she said. "We don't have the vehicles or drivers to go [to] all those places [off campus]."

"We can only run what we can run with funds. This year, money went to the new bus [on the Red Route]," said Bob Furniss, director of Parking and Transportation.

Furniss also said that wait times of over 45 minutes were recorded for almost half of all riders.

"We can better serve the campus population [by doing this]," Furniss said. "This past year, we realized that [the Stingerette service] was not working. You can't run a transit service and have someone who wants to use your service wait that long. Usually, the tolerance level [among riders] is five to eight minutes."

"In the last three weeks, the majority of students waited about 10 minutes or less [for a Stingerette to arrive], although there were about 140 [riders] per night versus 350," he said.

According to Furniss, the original vision of the Stingerette service was to provide safe transportation to students on campus. The boundaries had always been the edges of campus.

"Because of expansion outside of campus, students are moving off campus," Furniss said. "The boundaries were never changed, but the service was responding to student requests. Now the Stingerette is being treated as a taxi service-this was never the intent."

Furniss acknowledged that many students from Home Park are accustomed to using the service. However, he said students need to consider the costs of transportation when deciding to live off-campus, since the service is only meant for on-campus use.

"There are legitimate safety concerns. However, if you choose to live outside the [campus] boundary, you have to take that [consideration] into your decision. There are other options, such as a weekend/evening [parking] permit," Furniss said. A weekend/evening parking permit allows students to park during these times at a reduced cost.

"The only fair way to determine where we'll go is to say we are a service on campus. The Stingerette is not a taxi service. This is what students have to recognize," Meyers said.

"It's a trade-off because you can't really please everybody," said Adam Azaibi, second-year Chemical Engineering major. "The people who live in Home Park would want [the Stingerette] to go campus, but the ones who live on campus would want the opposite."

Jenny Rainwater, a second-year Aerospace Engineering major, said that the decision was unfair to Home Park residents who depended on the service to get home late at night.

"It's not really fair considering that [Home Park] is so far from the campus and its not exactly the safest area to be walking around in late at night," she said.

The decision had nothing to do with rising gas prices, Furniss said. "If I find that gas prices are significantly higher, I would ask for funding. This decision was made entirely because of the timing issue."

Furniss also dispelled rumors that the service changed because users were abusing it. The rumors said that the Stingerette was receiving too many calls from intoxicated students.

"We wouldn't take intoxicated people; we would just call the police. [Taking intoxicated people] puts people at risk; we wouldn't respond to a call like that." Furniss said. "The issue is not so much abuse. What's happened is that the Stingerette has evolved into a taxi service."

As for the future, Furniss said that although the Stingerette will probably remain an on campus service for the remainder of the year, this may change in the future. "Where will it evolve in the next couple of years? I don't know. I don't know if we will stick to our borders forever," he said.

"My only problem with the expansion of the service is where does it end? Home Park is an obvious [destination], but there are more places that the Stingerette could go. We have to draw the line somewhere, and the service is really intended to be on campus," he said.