This Sunday afternoon, GUSA passed a “Resolution Concerning the Extension of GUTS Bus Schedules.”

A bill to break the bubble

Introduced by Mary Beth Brosnihan (SFS ’13), the bill encourages the extension of Georgetown University Transport Shuttle weekend service. The proposed schedule advocates operating hours from 6am until 1am on Saturdays and Sundays for Dupont and Rosslyn lines, with buses running every hour. Currently, GUTS operates on Saturdays from 12pm to 6pm, with buses running every hour and 20 minutes.

“It has been really annoying that there hasn’t been extensive service on weekends. Georgetown really is a bubble, and transportation should not be a reason why people are not exploring D.C. This resolution will decrease the time and difficulty it takes to get off the Hilltop,” said Brosnihan.

Jack Schmitt (COL ’15) added, “Many courses I take require me to go off campus to museums and such. If this university’s motto is cura personalis, it would only make sense that they support us going and exploring these various places.”

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Just when we were beginning to get over our excitement about the GUTS buses running late on weekend nights, we have something new to look forward to: a new mobile app that will allow commuters to track GUTS shuttles in real time.

Connected to a new GPS-tracking feature for university shuttles, NextGUTS will map the location of the next available GUTS bus, allowing anyone with an Apple or Android smartphone to look up estimated times of arrival for the next available shuttles. (LOL, sorry Windows Phone and BlackBerry.)

The NextGUTS new feature is an strong update to the app, since it previously only told the next time of departure for the shuttles. As everyone appreciates being able to be efficient and maximize their time, this new tracking system will be extremely beneficial for students, faculty, and staff alike.

Additionally (and most importantly) the NextGUTS app will include real time arrivals for the new late-night shuttles to and from M Street, Dupont Circle-Adams Morgan, West Georgetown, and Burleith, which will prove to be a gift from heaven on cold winter nights next year.

The app was created in collaboration by Georgetown University Facilities and University Information Services. Throughout the year, the team has worked to develop a historical data set that has the ability to monitor things like red lights and traffic jams that might alter arrival time predictions.

For example, app knows that an off-time bus ride that normally takes 15 minutes will take much longer in peak traffic times, and it ensures that users know this as well.

Though the official launch of the app is April 15, it still needs some trial time before it is running entirely smoothly. According to Robin Morey, Vice President for Planning and Facilities Management, the more data the app compiles, the more accurate its estimations of arrival times will be.

Users can download the Georgetown mobile app from the Google Play store for Android phones or App Store for iPhones.

Image: Google Play store

A few years ago, ANC Chair Ron Lewis said at a meeting: “They’re still in our communities and on Reservoir Road in our neighborhood and that is unacceptable.” If you can’t already guess who the “they” is in that sentence, well, it’s us, the students. And we just won’t stop living and transporting ourselves around the city. Shocking.

After escalated pressure from neighborhood groups, the University tested out a different, longer route for the Dupont GUTS buses in 2009. Now we’re back at square one with a proposed route in the new Campus Plan which uses Canal Road instead of Reservoir to get to Dupont.

“The new circuitous GUTS bus routes through Canal Road will lengthen the commute to Dupont, making it more difficult for students to access the city,” GUSA President Clara Gustafson (SFS’ 13) and Vice President Vail Koehnert-Yount (SFS ’13) said in a press release to all students last night. This was one of the several provisions the GUSA executive agreed was a disappointing result of the campus plan.

The route change has the potential to offset students’ trips to their internships and jobs in the city. This decision will affect undergraduate students but also graduate students living off campus, faculty, and staff. Some of the most frequent users of GUTS bus are in fact staff working for the Georgetown hospital and other parts of campus.

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Yesterday, at approximately 12:43 p.m., a Georgetown University Transportation Shuttle bus crashed into a stone barrier pole outside of the Jesuit Residence. The accident was apparently due to faulty breaks brakes.

According to eyewitness Christina Hu (MSB ’13), the bus, which was headed for Rosslyn, left the McDonough parking lot a few minutes late and began accelerating as it headed towards the stop. The bus then went onto the sidewalk, as pedestrians fled out of the way, and hit two small trees before finally stopping on impact with barrier.

“I’m surprised that the people who were in the path of the bus weren’t more hysterical,” Hu wrote in an email. “Some literally missed death (or serious injury) by an inch.”

When the driver, who was the only one on board, got off the bus, he told the surrounding people that problems with brakes resulted in the crash. No injuries were reported.

Photo by Twitter user @randerson24

About a month after releasing his “Next GUTS” Droid app, Chris Cronbaugh (COL ’12) will become a little more popular on the Mac end of the “Macs vs. All Other Technologies” debate, announcing yesterday the release of an iOS version of his app.

Pretty much every Georgetown student knows that it’s always handy to have a smartphone (or, rather, always frustratingly unhandy not to have one) when coming back on the Metro and having to navigate through various Georgetown transportation websites in order to find one with a workable schedule. This app makes this process as easy as opening a game of Angry Birds, conveniently designed with individual buttons for every route except the Arlington Loop (which, let’s be serious, nobody really uses anyway).

The app does not give information about whether or not a bus is running on time, and instead just tells the next scheduled departure. Disappointing, because then you could also tell which Dupont bus is taking that incomprehensibly unnecessary, double-length route.

The 2010-2011 Georgetown University Student Association Senators were sworn in on Sunday, officially beginning the year’s agenda. While the meeting was heavy on ideas and questions from the senators and light on formal votes, the discussions suggest that many of last year’s issues will rear their heads soon.

Chris Pigott (COL’12), last year’s Senate Vice-Speaker, moderated the meeting.

Student Activities Fee and Endowment Reform (SAFE Reform)

In 2001, a system was set up to allocate half of the Student Activities fee to student organizations, club sports, and the media board. The other half went to an endowment, which, according to the plan, would eventually become self-sustaining and eliminate the need to collect a student activities fee from each student on a semester basis.

At the current interest rates, however, GUSA representatives are concerned that students wouldn’t see the effect of the endowment plan until at least 2025. Let’s hope that the Finance and Appropriation Committee looks into the endowment money and creates a plan to speed up the process.

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Although nothing agitates the blood of a Vox reader quite like a post about a Citizens Association of Georgetown meeting about the 2010 Campus Plan, you’ve got to hand it to our neighbors in West Georgetown—they know that plan backwards and forwards. CAG seems to have a clear idea about what exactly in the plan they don’t like and why it threatens their neighborhood.

Don’t believe me? Then you should go to the next Burleith Citizens Association meeting about the 2010 Campus Plan, where their take on the plan is unfortunately beset by speculation and half-truths.

If you read our coverage of the first meeting the BCA held about the final plan draft in April, you’re already familiar with Burleith residents’ main gripes with the 2010 Campus Plan. And if you didn’t, I’m sure you can guess the usual suspects. The plan doesn’t add new on-campus housing for undergraduates; it adds over 2,400 graduate students to the school in the next ten years; it threatens to increase traffic in the neighborhood; and in general, it gets residents talking about how awful it is to live near students. With a few adjustments, the slides at the two meetings that the BCA held this past Saturday and Sunday to talk about the 2010 Campus Plan were more or less the same as the last meeting.

So I’ll spare you another rundown of what Burleith hates about the plan. What’s more interesting is what they just don’t get about it.

Let’s start with the portion of the presentation led by Candith Pallandre, the BCA’s treasurer, which consisted almost entirely of assumptions and misunderstandings. Pallandre zeroed in on the road that will run the length of campus between the woods and Kehoe Field, the tennis courts, and the power plant.

“This was supposed to be a service road, and now they’re saying that buses are service vehicles,” she said. With a knowing smile, she continued, “Buses carrying students are not really service vehicles.”

Pallandre didn’t give any clues as to why it would be a problem for GUTS buses to drive along a road that is bordered by woods and Georgetown University property. But it’s clear that she assumed the University thought it was being sneaky by classifying GUTS buses as service vehicles, and that this would have sneaky consequences.

In reality, the road will allow Georgetown University to pick up passengers from the north end of campus and then exit out Canal Road—which is what Burleith residents have been demanding for years.

After the jump, we recap the rest of the gripes from last weekend’s BCA meeting.

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Last Sunday, members of the Georgetown University Student Association decided to bail out a quickly depleting account that funds weekend service of Georgetown University Transit Shuttles. During the April 26 meeting, GUSA senators disclosed that the funds were being spent at an alarming rate to fund continued service.

The allocation of an additional $5,000—voted in by a narrow majority of 11 in favor, 10 against, and 1 abstention—will fund approximately 65 percent of the GUTS service with the remainder expected to be picked up by other groups at the University. Debate over the measure was prolonged and occasionally heated with a number of Senators arguing it should not be the role of GUSA to bail out the funds.

“I think one of the most frustrating aspects of this for me is the way blame for this has been offloaded onto GUSA,” Speaker of the Senate Adam Talbot said during the meeting.

“This is a service that the University ought to be providing if it wishes to be the University it claims to be. I’ve been incredibly frustrating as I’ve watched the news reports on this develop,” he added. “It’s quite shameful the way this has been perpetrated so far.”

Talbot eventually concluded that, despite his frustration, students should add money to the funds, an opinion that was shared by GUSA Vice President Jason Kluger.

“The function of the GUSA Fund is to help out students in any way possible … and fill any void in student life,” Kluger explained.

Most students who expressed support for the motion believed that it would be irresponsible for GUSA to fail to finance GUTS service as they have been the source of funding in the past.

“I supported the GUTS appropriation because I think it is a vitally important service to this campus that we could not in good conscience, allow to fail,” Senator Adam Mortillaro, one of the most vocal supporters of the bill, wrote in an email.

At this week’s meeting of the Georgetown University Student Association, Senator Greg Laverriere (COL’12) announced that a deal had been reached with the Student Activities Commission, making the advisory board eligible for money from the student activities fee. The Senate also passed a resolution encouraging socially responsible investing, discussed solutions to a funding shortage that threatens to end the weekend GUTS bus service, and (most importantly) announced an event we’ve all been anxiously waiting for—a GUSA party. Let’s get to the wrap:

Deal reached with SAC: In the beginning of the GUSA meeting, Laverriere read to the full senate the text of the agreement that had been reached with SAC. Laverriere said the agreement had been passed by the Finance and Appropriations Committee and that it could be voted upon by the full senate next week. In the agreement SAC agrees to make public any votes held for lump sum funding, which will be instituted next year, but reserves the right of closed votes for all policy and sanction votes.

GUTS bus funding shortage: In his executive briefing, GUSA President Calen Angert (MSB ’11) asked senators for ideas on how to deal with the lack of funds for the weekend GUTS bus service. The service has traditionally been funded jointly by the SAC and GUSA. Angert questioned whether GUSA was the right source of funding for the service.

“Lots of people use [the weekend GUTS buses.] Why is the student government of this school funding this?” Angert said.

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On Monday afternoon, a GUTS bus driver struck a cyclist as he was turning the corner at Reservoir Road. Several sources, including Nick Troiano (COL ’11) and the D.C. Fire and EMS department, reported the accident on Twitter just before 2:00 p.m.

University Spokesperson Andy Pino wrote in an e-mail that the cyclist was not seriously injured, and the GUTS bus driver was not at fault.

“The cyclist was not seriously injured and she admitted to being at fault in the incident,” he wrote. “The GUTS driver called for an ambulance to assure that she was not injured. A police report was taken, and the driver was not cited. EMTs checked out the cyclist and put a bandage on her knee.”

Photo from Washington City Paper