Now that ASMSU’s Safe Ride initiative has passed, it’s time to look at what students think about this program in addition to if and how they think it will be used.
Prior to the initiative passing through the General Assembly, Vice President for Finance and Operations Jason Barnett and ASMSU conducted a survey asking students about Safe Ride.
The survey as to whether or not students feel safe on campus at night, how they choose transportation options, if they would use a service like Safe Ride and how much they would pay for it.
The survey found when it comes to transportation options, cost is an important, or very important, aspect for 96 percent of students.
Ninety-four percent said the same about convenience, 91 percent felt this way about safety and 86 percent of students said that the time of ride is important or very important to them.
When it came to perception of safety on campus, the survey found that “58% of MSU Students who participated in this survey generally feel safe walking alone on campus after 9:00pm. 94% feel safe walking in a group on campus after 9:00pm.”
This figure is considerably different when it comes to off campus safety. Significantly less students feel safe walking alone off campus after 9 p.m.
According to ASMSU’s survey, “27% of MSU Students who participated in this survey generally feel safe walking alone off campus after 9:00pm. 84% feel safe walking in a group off campus after 9:00pm.”
The program began on April 2, and Barnett said he believes it’s important for students to be aware of how this service works.
Barnett explained to request a ride through Safe Ride, students will need to either download the “TransLoc Rider” application on their phone, go to ondemand.transloc.com or call the Safe Ride dispatch center at 517-884-8069.
From there, Barnett said the system is “very, very easy to use, very similar to Uber or Lyft.”
He explained once in the app, students must select MSU and will be prompted to log in with their MSU NetID.
“You can pretty much after that set your pickup location, set your drop off location, it will tell you how long the wait time is expected to be,” Barnett said. “Once you’re the next ride, you’ll actually get a text message saying, ‘hey, you’re the next ride’ and once your van shows up, you’ll get another text saying ‘hey, we’re here’ and you’ll be able to just go out and it will take you home.”
ASMSU’s Safe Ride Pilot began April 2. It is running Sunday through Wednesday from 10 p.m. to 3 a.m. until the end of the semester.
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