Shuttle Rebuttal

ONE OF THE PROPOSED Cabot House t-shirt slogans last year was "It's a long walk, but the rooms suck."

Twenty-seven million dollar renovations to the Radcliffe Quadrangle--now underway--have responded to the second half of Cabot Houser's gripes, but the University still hasn't found a way short of plate tectonics to bring the Quad closer to Harvard Square.

There is, however, one way of reducing the distance of North, Cabot, and Currier Houses from the Charles River, while at the same time reducing the angst of being quaded: improve shuttle bus service to the former Radcliffe dormitories.

The current Harvard shuttle bus runs a spiderweb of routes, taking its riders anywhere from the Science Center to Soldiers Field Park, to Teele Hall (wherever that may be) to Mather House. Unfortunately, the result of the shuttle bus's breadth of service is that service to central areas is slower.

Currently, the shuttle runs only every fifteen minutes from Lamont or the Science Center at night.

Furthermore, because the shuttle goes so many places, while trying to avoid one-way streets that go the wrong way, getting a person from Lamont to Hilles takes almost as long as transferring reserve reading between the two libraries.

The reason the shuttle covers such a vast expanse of territory, College administrators have said, is that by serving the business and Kennedy Schools, the College can defray some of the costs of the buses onto those graduate schools.

In light of the $27 million being spent on improving the quality of life at the Quad, it seems ironic that Harvard cannot improve the quality of getting to the quad.

A shuttle that took students from the Quad to a centrally located place in the square--say Elsie's--would not only save time, but would allow more frequent shuttle service. Such a shuttle could run back and forth from the quad every five minutes.

Since many of the shuttle's other stops are but a few blocks from such a centrally located stop, service to Mather, the B-school, and the K-school could be eliminated. (For those going from the Square to Mather, the three minute walk to Lamont and five minute wait for the shuttle is already slower than walking.)

In addition, the new service could prevent another of last year's Cabot House t-shirt slogans from popping up this year: "It's not just a ten-minute walk, it's a thirty-five minute shuttlebus ride.