Yale Parking and Transit on March 26 launched a new pilot yellow line for the shuttle, beginning on College and Wall streets and traveling southbound toward the Yale Medical School.
According to a statement by Wendy Xiao GRD ’18, head of the Graduate Student Assembly, the line responds both to concerns voiced in departmental meetings held by assembly representatives and to the Transport Survey the assembly and Graduate and Professional Student Senate conducted last year.
“The area that is covered by students in East Rock is getting bigger, from my understanding, so now there’s more students who are living in areas that are far away from the shuttle, so they get another shuttle to deal with that,” Xiao said.
The day route, which will start at 2 p.m., includes a southbound route that follows the blue line and makes a loop from College and Wall streets to Cedar Street before going back along York Street. The northbound route also crosses College and Wall streets but runs along Sachem, Whitney, Huntington and Prospect. New stops include 225 Prospect St. and Pauli Murray and Benjamin Franklin colleges.
The nighttime version of the yellow line, which will start running at 6 p.m. and end at 1 a.m., travels northbound to Prospect and Sachem streets and follows the night blue line stops southbound. The nighttime route also goes to Union Station, the medical school and up York Street.
University spokesman Tom Conroy said Yale will reevaluate the yellow line at the end of this academic year after receiving feedback from the Graduate Student Assembly, the Senate and the Yale College Council.
“The new yellow line was created after collaboration between Yale’s Parking and Transit Department and the YCC, GSA and GPSS,” Conroy said. “This new shuttle route will improve transportation options for undergraduate and graduate students traveling between classes on Science Hill, Benjamin Franklin and Pauli Murray colleges, and the central and medical campuses.”
Fabian Schrey GRD ’19 said the new line should serve 3 purposes: bridging central campus with science hill and the new colleges, increasing the predictability of the shuttle lines and facilitating an easy commute to and from East Rock — a neighborhood where many graduate students live.
According to Schrey, the blue line, like many others, can convert into a door-to-door shuttle service, meaning that passengers can give the driver a specific address — often a home address — and the shuttle will divert from its route.
“We are constantly in touch with Yale Transit to see how this goes,” Schrey said. “We try to hear back from our constituents in our assembly meetings to see what they report back. Accordingly, we will pass that on and constantly update and tweek the yellow line to see how … it is being taken up.”
Chelsea Blink GRD ’22, who lives close to the blue line, also said she finds it confusing.
Blink has used the yellow line once since it has started running, she said, and she was pleased that it left her close to her house on Whitney Ave.
According to the 2017 Transit and Security Survey conducted by the Graduate Student Assembly and Senate, more than 20 percent of the 1,545 respondents use a fixed-route shuttle to get home from work.
Carly Wanna | carly.wanna@yale.edu