High demand leaves some students without a ride home
The Carolina Cab program may be a step up from the rarely-used Cocky’s Caravan service, but Student Government is now faced with the challenge of how to accommodate all the students wanting to use their free cab rides on weekends.
In the three-week period from Jan. 12 through Jan. 29, 1,250 students used the Carolina Cab, already nearly double the amount that Cocky’s Caravan received during the entire Spring 2010 semester, according to Student Body President-elect Kenny Tracy. Tracy, who served as secretary of SG’s safety and transportation committee last year, said he was glad to see a positive response from student riders.
“It’s good that all students are seeing the benefits of this program, not just Student Government,” Tracy said.
Capt. Eric Grabski of USC’s Department of Law and Safety, said this increase in ridership is also good news for public safety.
“If there’s safe transportation to get back to a residence hall on campus, the likelihood of being a victim of any other type of crime, especially a robbery, dramatically goes down,” Grabski said.
However, the cab system may not be large enough for all the students who want to use it. Only two cabs are in circulation from the 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. Three are available from 11 p.m. to 12 p.m. and five are available from 12 a.m. to 3 a.m., the time frame in which most Five Points bars close. Lines of students begin forming on the sidewalks after midnight, and snake around the Five Points fountain as students wait for a ride home before the cab service closes for the night.
Tracy said this has resulted in some students being unable to get a safe ride home because of high demand right at the end of the cabs’ running time. SG has yet to put forth any ideas on how to reduce wait times for a cab, but Tracy said that would be an issue for this year’s agenda.
“Since we’re still a fairly new program, we just have to figure out what works for us,” Tracy said.
Some cab users say timeliness is only one of the organizational issues with the Carolina Cab service. Third-year anthropology and women’s and gender studies student Aaron Guest has been a regular patron of the Carolina Cab since it started running last year and says that the level of service has been comparatively subpar for students. Guest said he and his friends spent 15 minutes walking around Five Points trying to get their name on the list for a cab and 10 minutes waiting for a ride. He estimates he could have easily walked back to his apartment in the same amount of time. He was also miffed when a cab driver charged him $1.25 extra to drive him to Aspyre, which is within the free service’s 5-mile radius.
“The constant rudeness of the taxi drivers and coordinators of Carolina Cab for the company running it are completely unbecoming of a business,” Guest said. “They need to realize that we [students] are paying customers. We just pay through our activity fees. It’s a good service; I think there needs to be more university involvement, like someone actually from the university should be out there to organize it.”
The Carolina Cab is run through Checker Yellow Cab Company. Since September, the service has cost SG $750 per night to run, a $500 increase from the original price during its trial period in order to commission more cabs. The service is supported by the same portion of the student activity fee that ran Cocky’s Caravan, about $2 per student. Guest said he would happily continue to pay that amount for a semester of free cab rides, but he still feels that the current service leaves plenty of room for improvement.
“Carolina Cab is a necessary evil,” Guest said. “It is also probably the only direct thing many of us students see Student Government doing, as well as ... the only thing we care about.”