Student Union Vice President Gloria Park '13 spearheaded an initiative to collect student feedback regarding the current shuttle service system.

A survey regarding shuttle services was sent in an email to the Brandeis community on April 5 in order to receive suggestions for improvement. According to Park, in an email to the Justice, the Union has received 383 completed surveys.

Park mentioned the possibility of adding a $20 fee per student at the April 7 Senate meeting to make it possible to augment shuttle hours not only Thursday through Sunday, but also to potentially add hours during the week for the Riverside T station. According to Park, Sundays are being used as a trial to narrow this focus.

"The [shuttle] schedule is set up because, years back, we sent a survey to the community and those are the times they wanted," said Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan in an interview with the Justice.

However, according to Park, the current survey shows demand for additional hours and additional stops. "Overall, I've been really encouraged by the support and passion that students had in increasing their access to go out to Boston," wrote Park in an email to the Justice. "Generally speaking, most people were favorable of increasing the shuttle bus hours to earlier on weekends as well as adding the option of Riverside shuttle buses during the week."

According to Director of Public Safety Ed Callahan, the funding for additional shuttle hours would have to come from a source other than Public Safety. "I don't have any additional money to fund any additional hours," said Callahan in an interview with the Justice. "If we have funding ... then we can look and see if it's feasible."

Even in the wake of the Union's efforts to add hours and stops for the shuttle, Callahan is still unsure of the shuttle services that will be available to students during the 2013-2014 school year. "The possibility exists that next year it could be cut ... I don't know what the budget is for next year, but it could remain the same," said Callahan. "I don't know how the money is divided. I haven't received my operational budge for next year. I can only spend the money I'm allocated."

According to Park, the money for the trial run will be coming from the Student Union. However, in the survey, questions regarding whether or not students would be willing to pay a small fee were answered in a relatively affirmative light. In terms of paying an extra $1-3 only for additional services, Park stated that 46 percent of students said that they would be willing to do so, 28 percent said they would not and 26 percent said that they might.

"The question that [Finance Board Member] Paul Lee ['XX] and I were most interested in were hypothetical question #3, which actually ran into minor miscommunication issue with the wording," Park wrote.

According to Park, the question originally asked if students would be willing to pay $20 in addition to tuition and services to provide more bus services, including weekday shuttle buses and earlier bus hours on weekends. Park stated that 57 percent would be willing, 23 percent said no and 20 percent said maybe.

Park, though, claimed that the question the survey should have stated was, "If a fixed transportation fee of $20 is taken from the currently paid amount for your Student Activity Fee to add more variety of shuttle bus times and locations, would you be willing to support the initiative?"

"[B]ecause this question was edited later, not many students have noticed the change. However, if majority of the people were willing to pay $20 more, then we thought that we could also assume that MORE people would be in favor of allocating $20 for those transportation services from what students already pay," wrote Park.

Park, Lee and F-Board chair Nathan Israel '14 are "exploring different options to extend shuttle bus services without paying an additional fee," wrote Park.

Trial buses were originally scheduled to run on Friday, April 19 from noon to 3 p.m. for the additional Riverside T Stop and Sunday, April 21 from 9 a.m. to noon for the additional Sunday hours. However, these plans are to be postponed due to yesterday's explosion at the Boston Marathon.

"[D]ue to the tragedy that Boston had experienced earlier today, we will NOT be having our trial buses to Boston/Cambridge on Fridays and Sundays this week," wrote Park. "We wanted to reflect the message that Brandeis community has for the students, and as students' safety is our top priority, we decided to delay the bus trial to prevent any potential danger that may still take place in Boston."