News > October 18, 2007

By Jacob Bathanti | Staff writer

Oct. 11 was a notable day at the university, and not only because of the Deacons’ come-from-behind victory over Florida State on the football field. It also marked the inaugural run of the Deacon Express, a shuttle system that will ferry students from campus to home football games.

click to enlarge

Students wait to get on the new Deacon Express shuttle. Implemented to take students to and from football games, service began for the Oct. 11 game against FSU. (Kelly Makepeace/Old Gold & Black)

The four shuttles took students to the game starting two and a half hours before kickoff and began to run again, back to campus, at halftime.

This schedule was designed to give more casual fans as well as diehard Demon Deacons easy access to the games.

“Allowing shuttles to run at halftime was a very difficult decision,” said junior Matt Six, founder of the Deacon Express. “I hate to see people leave early, and I love seeing students stay and cheer.” However, Six said, he wanted the shuttles to benefit the entire university community, not just the diehard football fans.

Six developed the idea of the Deacon Express in conjunction with a focus group within LEAD. The idea for a shuttle service had been tossed around the past five years.

This summer, Six and his LEAD group worked to rekindle the idea, as he felt it could affect many students, by giving transportation and helping to free up parking space.

Every year LEAD circulates proposals to Student Government. Ideas with potential are followed up on. In this case, senior Whitney Marshall, SG president, saw potential and created a special committee for the Deacon Express project. This committee helped especially with publicizing the shuttle program.

Before the publicizing, the biggest hurdle was negotiations with a bus company to run the shuttles. A number of companies simply didn’t want to deal with the university.

Eventually the committee settled on American Charters, the same company that transports the football team and the band to games.

Six’s own forte is logistical planning, which came in handy dealing with the problems faced by past shuttle proposals. The initially proposed route, running south on University Parkway and then onto Shorefair Road, is the shortest by mileage, but tends to bog down in traffic.

The route in use now takes students to the games via Polo, Indiana and 32nd Street. It’s a more roundabout approach, but it avoids traffic, which is crucial to minimizing travel time.

Student reaction was positive. “I would do it again,” junior Josh Martin said. “It let us off within 100 yards of the student parking area with no traffic frustrations, so I was happy.”

This is not to say that the shuttle run went off totally without a hitch.

At one point a large group of students left the game without waiting for the shuttle, disgruntled by a long wait.

Marshall said, however, that most of the problems encountered were beyond the control of the shuttle program.

A fire on Patterson Avenue hindered travel, as did roadblocks on Shorefair.

One of the shuttles also got stuck waiting for a train at a railroad crossing. Such issues, Marshall said, are unlikely to arise on a regular basis.

Six said that the shuttle committee will continue to meet and work with the shuttle company, as well as the Winston Salem Police Department, to refine the logistical aspects of the program.

The next time the shuttles will run will be to the next home game, against the UNC - Chapel Hill Oct. 27. They will depart from Lot P, behind Poteat House, starting two-and-a-half hours before the game. The committee is investigating the possibility of adding one more shuttle to deal with the increased traffic projected for Parent’s Weekend.