Tag: Transportation

Virginia Tech provides Safe Ride services to ensure transportation safety

By Sophia Gerni, crime, safety, and justice reporter.

 

Virginia Tech Safe Ride van. Photo by the Virginia Tech Police Department.

Blacksburg, Va. — Walking around campus or the greater Blacksburg area during late-night hours can bring uneasiness and possibilities of feeling unsafe. Virginia Tech’s Police Department provides Safe Ride, which ensures safe and free transportation for anyone who may feel unsafe.

Virginia Tech’s nighttime safety escort, “Safe Ride,” starts in the evening and runs well into the night. Through a request on the TransLoc Rider app, they will provide walking escorts as well as car pickup by trained student drivers. Safe Ride is there to help students, faculty and staff, visitors of the university and Blacksburg locals get to their next destination around the Virginia Tech campus safely. With the usual form of transportation being a van, there are times when the van is not in operation. In this case, a member of the Virginia Tech Police Department will drive a police car to your location or give a walking escort if requested.

TransLoc Rider app showing the outline of Safe Ride pick up area. Screenshot from the TransLoc Rider app.

Kendrah Cline, Administrative Captain and Safe Ride Supervisor at Virginia Tech Police Department, said she wants people to be and feel safe when walking around Virginia Tech.

“The premise of Safe Ride is that you feel safe going from one place on campus to the next. Whether that’s in the van, an officer comes to pick you up, a security officer comes to pick you up or we walk.”

Cline knows that requesting a Safe Ride could be intimidating to those who have never used the service before, which is why the drivers are instructed to not to ask questions regarding the reason for the ride.

“We don’t really need to know your business or why you want a Safe Ride; we shouldn’t be asking you,” Cline said. “Whether it’s a safety thing or you just really don’t feel like walking, we don’t ask. I don’t want to say that we don’t care, but that’s not our judgment to make; we’re always going to say, ‘Okay, where do you need to go?’

Brooke Nicholes, a junior at Virginia Tech, called Safe Ride to avoid walking alone in the dark. “I was in my car and ordered a Safe Ride to get back to campus. I didn’t want to walk alone at night,” Nicholes said. “They didn’t ask me any questions; it was great.” 

Nicholes understands the importance of having someone with you when walking alone, especially for freshmen who don’t have easy or quick access to their cars.

“I remember when I was a freshman, I wouldn’t want to go to my car at night if I had to go somewhere. I would only go places during the day because I was too scared to walk alone at night,” Nicholes said. “I think it’s nice for freshmen, especially because at night you park so far away from your dorm. I think a Safe Ride is nice because you can get picked up from your car and go straight to your dorm safely.”

Safe Ride’s goal is to provide comfortable, easy, and safe access around the Virginia Tech campus. Cline understands that in some circumstances, some may feel unsure about calling, especially if the van isn’t running and a police officer comes to help instead.

“We’re very well aware that if you call for a Safe Ride, maybe you’ve had a little too much to drink and you don’t want an officer to come pick you up. Because of this, we want to have more student drivers so those requesting a ride feel more comfortable.” 

Safe Ride’s goal for student drivers is to provide a friendly face when being picked up. The Safe Ride service runs from 8 p.m. to 3 a.m. Sunday through Friday in the fall semester and 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. during the Spring Semester. On Saturdays, both during the spring and fall semesters, Safe Ride service begins at 4 a.m. With many students not ready to commit to the late work hours, these positions have been hard to fill. 

Cline would like to have these positions filled sooner than later. “One way that Safe Ride can be improved is to try to get these positions filled so that it’s a really efficient, full set of drivers, every night of the week,” Cline said. 

While Safe Ride is available for use, Cline understands that people may use other forms of transportation alone. With Uber and Lyft being popular for students at Virginia Tech, it is important to be aware of your surroundings and with another person if possible. 

“There are going to be occasions where you will need to order an Uber or something, and you are getting in that vehicle by yourself. In that case, I think it’s good for someone to know where you are and that you have taken this Uber,” Cline said. “Try to have a good, trusted group or friend with you, even if you are walking across campus or out in Blacksburg. Whether you’ve had some drinks or not, I think it’s good just to stay with a trusted group, or at least one person.”

Transportation safety of any kind is always important. When you are in the car with someone that you don’t know, stay focused and aware at all times.

It’s Electric! Or, It might be

by Carolina Nunez-

School bus stopping to pick up elementary students. Picture taken on March 23, 2023 by Carolina Nunez in Blacksburg Virginia

Many schools in Virginia have been granted the opportunity to have electric buses in their communities in April and September of 2022 as a part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan Electric School Bus Rebates and the annual 2021 Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) School Bus Rebates. Some of these areas include Newport News, Loudoun County, Culpeper County, Petersburg City, and Carroll County public schools. Each of these zones were granted upwards of $100,000, the highest fund awarded being $900,000, going towards acquiring electric school buses according to WXFR with New River Valley news. 

 When it comes to Blacksburg public schools,  Mayor Leslie Hager-Smith states that “[Blacksburg] will hopefully have about half our fleet in electric buses.” What exactly does this mean for schools in the New River Valley?  

Dr. Bernard Bragen, superintendent for Montgomery County Public Schools, said, “In the Montgomery County Public Schools, as of right now, we have 4 electric school buses.”

“It all comes down to economics. If the state of Virginia incentivizes the buses where the costs are the same in gas- we would do it in a heartbeat,” Bragen continued.

Montgomery County Public School Administration office entrance. Picture taken on March 24, 2023 by Carolina Nunez in Christiansburg, Virginia

Bragen explained that electric school buses are not cheap in price. The 2021 American Rescue Plan Electric School Bus Rebates had planned to offer approximately $10 million to public and private fleet owners for the replacement of old diesel school buses with new buses certified to EPA’s cleanest emission standards. This plan mostly applied to schools in more “densely populated areas” because these are the areas that are developing a more “clean” environment. 

The idea to replace regular school buses with newer electric ones has been circulating throughout the nation. But why is it necessary? Dominion Energy reports that replacing one diesel bus can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 54,000 pounds each year. This means the air quality inside a diesel bus is 5x worse than outside the bus. Replacing a diesel bus with an electric bus improves air quality for students inside the bus and for the communities outside of them. 

Diesel powered school buses produce more than 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions. According to the NYBCA, There are more than 480,000 yellow school buses across the United States that transport an estimated 26 million students to and from school. This alone saves close to 2.3 billion gallons of fuel and saves families more than $7.3 billion in fuel costs each year. This is great for our economy, but terrible for the environment and the children who are constantly being exposed to their buses exhaust fumes. 

Despite the benefits of having an electric school bus, it is not so easy to acclimate them to certain areas. Bragen explained that, “The issue with the electric buses is that some things like temperature matter. Typically you would be able to get 200 miles with one charge on a bus, which would normally be okay, but the temperature we experience affects that rate.”  Because the New River Valley does experience temperatures that vary from cold to warm in one day, this is an issue worth considering before converting to electric buses. 

With school buses being one of the most common vehicles on the road, the carbon footprint they leave behind has a big impact on the air we breathe every day. The nation as a whole has slowly inched towards replacing the regular diesel powered buses with the more efficient electrical school buses, but the question remains of whether the New River Valley will be a part of this change.