Boston College (BC) announced a plan last month to install GPS tracking systems in its campus shuttle buses. The devices, which will be similar to Tufts' JoeyTracker, will allow students to monitor the buses' locations via a Web site beginning next semester.
The university will use the GPS technology on both of its shuttle routes. One goes from the school's main campus in Chestnut Hill to its Newton campus, while the other runs from the main campus to stops in the surrounding Chestnut Hill and Brighton areas.
The GPS installation, which will be funded by the university, and the Web site should be available by the fall, "barring any major technical or logistical problems," Al Dea, the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC) president, told the Daily. A student initiative to create an iPhone or iTouch application to track the shuttles is also in its preliminary stages, he said.
Dea, a junior who helped present the GPS tracking proposal to the BC administration, said the system will provide greater convenience and safety for students who use the shuttle buses.
In particular, the tracking system will benefit students on the Newton campus. Approximately one-third of BC freshmen live there and rely on the bus to transport them to classes, dining halls and sports facilities on the main campus.
Students also use the shuttle system to access Boston, traveling on the bus to the Reservoir station on the MBTA's Green Line.
When putting together the proposal for the GPS monitoring devices to present to the university's administration, student leaders looked to other schools with similar technology.
"We kind of took a look at whatever we could find," Dea said, citing the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Stanford University and Harvard University as examples of schools with GPS trackers.
Tufts Community Union (TCU) Treasurer Matthew Shapanka, a senior who spearheaded the implementation of a GPS tracking system at Tufts, reacted positively to BC's plan.
"I think it's really cool that other schools are trying to implement the same technology that we have here, and I hope it works as well for them," he said.
Although MIT installed a GPS tracking system in its buses before Tufts finalized the JoeyTracker, Tufts was still one of the first universities to pioneer the technology, according to Shapanka. "At the time we came up with it, we didn't know about any others," he said.
Dea said that student concern about the current bus system, coupled with his experiences living on the Newton campus as a freshman and currently as a resident assistant, drove him to advocate for the GPS technology. "This is something that students had really been telling me [is] important to them," he said.
Erin Bradley, a junior at BC, has wanted a bus tracking system since her freshman year. "It has always been one of my big issues with BC's transportation, and it has affected me voting for one candidate over another [in UGBC elections]," she told the Daily.
Although the shuttles are supposed to run on a schedule, catching a bus is based on "the luck of the draw," Bradley said. BC students often wait between five and 15 minutes for buses, and Bradley said that longer wait times result in overcrowding. Tracking the bus through the GPS system "will just be so much easier," Bradley added.
Paul Sulzer, a freshman at BC, described the current bus system as inconvenient. "It's very frustrating when you're trying to get somewhere quickly, and you don't know when the bus is going to come, and you don't know how much longer you're going to wait," he told the Daily.
Sulzer said that the current system has noticeably delayed some freshmen who live on the Newton campus. "A couple of my friends who are in my class in the morning sometimes show up late to class because it's very difficult to judge when the bus is going be there," he said. "They've definitely had more trouble with it than I have."
With GPS tracking capabilities, "they can better time when they want to leave their dorms to go to the bus, and hopefully it will cut down on student frustration with the current system," he added.
