Organizers of the Student Association’s Armory Square shuttle are complaining about the weather.

In its first weekend, the newly relaunched shuttle ferried a lower number of students to downtown hotspots than SA officials had originally hoped. A total of 45 students rode the bus on Friday and 54 took it on Saturday, said SA Vice President Rigaud Noel, a senior political science major. The low numbers were partially caused by Friday’s wintry weather.

‘It was kind of expected due to the weather conditions on Friday night,’ Noel said.

Tim Carroll, spokesman for the Downtown Committee, said that when he checked the Armory Square stop to make sure the shuttles were arriving on Saturday, he saw only a handful of students getting off the bus. The Downtown Committee has provided the shuttle with support in the form of funds for advertising and discounts for students at area businesses.

‘Friday was a nasty evening,’ he said. ‘It’s November and you’ll get that kind of weather.’

Carroll added that there weren’t even that many non-students out in Armory Square that night.

As bad as Friday’s weather was, it may not have been the only reason for the poor turnout. A lack of student awareness of the shuttle, resulting from a lack of sufficient advertising, may have also been to blame, said SA President Andrew Thomson, a senior information management and political science major. Among the options SA might consider to boost awareness is an e-mail to the student body containing the shuttle schedule, Noel said. Noel added that he plans to spend this Saturday making the rounds of the residence halls to let students know about the bus.

This isn’t the first time the shuttle has encountered problems in its first weeks of operation. The shuttle was canceled last semester when ridership numbers fell off after Centro, the shuttle operator, forgot to run the bus on two separate occasions.

It is uncertain how, if at all, this newest setback will impact the long-term survival of the shuttle. SA had planned an event in Armory Square for Dec. 5, the shuttle’s last weekend of operation, but Thomson is unsure whether that event will proceed as planned if the poor ridership continues. Ultimately, the decision of whether or not the shuttle will survive rests with the SA assembly, Thomson said.

Carroll, too, said that it is still too early to tell whether the Downtown Committee will change its relationship with the shuttle. The committee has no intention of pulling its support during this trial period, he said.

‘It’s too premature to talk about that,’ Carroll said.

Published on November 19, 2003 at 12:00 pm