Officials added three off-campus stops to the SafeRide program in response to recent student advocacy.
Student Association Vice President Kate Carpenter announced the expansion, which includes 2400 M Apartments, The Flats at Dupont Circle and the Lincoln Memorial, at Monday’s SA Senate meeting. Destiny Jackson, the director of transportation and logistics, said the new locations could increase ridership on GW’s free, late-night transportation service for students on the Foggy Bottom Campus.
Jackson said the addition of new locations will increase ride wait times by a few minutes due to a nationwide shortage of drivers. She said to prevent delays for other riders, students should not cancel their rides at the last minute.
“This is definitely a service to provide a safe ride, and utilizing it any other way would really cause impact to those that really need it,” Jackson said.
The website states the service is intended for all “students, faculty and staff” who prefer to not walk alone at night. The service operates between 19th and 25th streets and from L Street to the intersection at E Street and Virginia Avenue, according to the SafeRide website.
Beyond the three new stops, the service also stops at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, The Aston and 1776 G Street.
Jackson said Carpenter, the SA vice president, suggested the new SafeRide locations after she conducted a survey to gauge student interest in adding off-campus locations. More than 240 students responded to the survey, with more than 90 percent of respondents supporting the expansion.
Carpenter said she had been working with Jackson on SafeRide expansion since the summer after students reached out with safety concerns about walking near campus at night.
The SA senate passed a resolution sponsored by Carpenter last month urging officials to extend the program’s boundaries for students who live in Foggy Bottom’s surrounding areas.
“It was so exciting to see how easily this went through the administration, and I’m so excited to help everybody who needed a SafeRide make sure that they get that,” Carpenter said.
The SafeRide program operates seven days a week from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m.
