Cornell Pilots Halloween Weekend Shuttle, Offering Students Free Rides Around Ithaca and Campus

Cornell Pilots Halloween Weekend Shuttle, Offering Students Free Rides Around Ithaca and Campus
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Cornell will offer students a free Halloween weekend shuttle service from 10 p.m to 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, Student & Campus Lifeannounced in an email to the student body on Wednesday

The service is part of Be Safe, Big Red, a new campaign dedicated to promoting transportation safety at Cornell. The shuttle will loop around campus, Collegetown and the Ithaca Commons, making eight stops along the way.

Riders must be currently enrolled at Cornell, and will be required to show their Cornell ID for entry. Shuttles will operate in a continuous loop, stopping at each pickup spot once every 15 minutes, and have the capacity for 30 passengers, a University spokesperson wrote to The Sun.

“Every student should have access to a safe, reliable way to get home,” a University spokesperson wrote to The Sun. They stated that the University-provided service will offer students “safe transportation on a historically busy weekend.”

Stops include Robert Purcell Community Center, Risley South, 312 College Avenue, Ithaca Commons, West Campus, Balch Hall, Thurston Avenue West and Ridgewood Road. The locations will be indicated by signs labeled “Red Shuttle Stop.”

These stops were chosen “to reach the highest concentration of students living on or near campus,” and to be “near the Commons and other downtown establishments,” the University spokesperson wrote.

The bus service will not offer live updates on its location, according to the spokesperson

The announcement asks riders to “be respectful to the driver, other passengers and the vehicle at all times,” explicitly stating that alcoholic beverages will not be permitted on the shuttle.

The University spokesperson told The Sun that the drivers are employed by New York State Department of Transportation licensed shuttle companies, and that there will be a “Cornell-affiliated ambassador” on each shuttle.

SCL also encourages students to consider taking the Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit, Ithaca’s local bus service, as an alternative. The TCAT is free to all Cornell students after 6 p.m. on weekdays and all day Saturday and Sunday. The latest bus trip runs at around 2:30 a.m. daily

Students who are visibly intoxicated will not be denied entry, the spokesperson told The Sun. SCL, however, instructs any students in “serious or urgent medical situations” to not take the shuttle and instead call 911 for emergency medical transportation

Mary Caitlin Cronin

Mary Caitlin Cronin is a member of the Class of 2028 in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She is a news editor for the 144th Editorial Board and can be reached at mcronin@cornellsun.com