Duke Van (dis)Service: whatever happened to SafeRides?

First there’s a busy signal. Then on the second try, I get a ring—actually no ring to be exact, just a cut right into an automated voice informing me of my options. No, I already know your hours of operation. No, I don’t want to hear about inclement weather. Yes, I would like to request a van…. “Hold, your call will be taken in the order it was received”, fair enough I guess. The dispatcher’s voice comes on gruff and thick, “Duke van service.” It sounds more like a retort than a greeting. I ask for a ride and announce my location—some God-forsaken corner of central, but of course that’s not what I really say. The voice on the other end repeats my location and then says something I don’t quite understand. The call ends.

I check my phone: 11:40; everything is dark and desolate, broken only by the sudden rush of sound and light of a passing C2. I watch cars turn off and on to Alexander Drive; my hands make fists in my pockets, cold bleeding into my fleece. Somewhere above my head, outside the tungsten halo of the street light I’m standing under, I hear the shrill chirps of a bat, and somewhere beyond that, the creak of a door shutting. On the threshold between Sunday night and Monday morning these are about the only signs of life noticeable on central.

This is the second time I’ve called SafeRides—or rather Duke Van Service—this year and the first time they agreed to pick me up. Last time I received a flat out denial, something about a policy of not picking up groups. “This is not a taxi service after all”, which, to be honest, was exactly what I had called for: a free shuttle to transport a night out with my friends from campus to The Lofts off Erwin. At the time, it seemed justified to abuse a system already notorious for inefficiency and purported to wield a blatant disregard for the pretense of safety that its presence implied. To put simply, people loved—and still love—to bemoan SafeRides’ flaws. Perhaps this is why I, as well as others, find the recent name change somewhat telling, especially in the context of the service’s history over the past 16 years.

Not many services at Duke have so consistently been criticized by students for falling short of its implied purpose: namely to provide a ride from campus when walking is unfeasible or unsafe. We all know the stories. Saferides is unreliable. Vans take forever to come. You have to be on campus for them to pick you up; one block off is out of the question. They will only come for girls. They will only come for girls in extreme situations. Sometimes they do not come at all.

Perhaps what’s less known is how old these grievances are. A casual search for the word “Saferides” in the Chronicle’s archives produces a litany of complaints, everything from articles direct in their scorn (“SafeRides is unsafe”, “SafeRides in need of serious renovation”, “Callers say SafeRides is unreliable”) to countless printed appeals for its expansion and increased funding. Even what may be the most popular SafeRides myth, that they only respond to females, first surfaces in writing near the program’s beginning in an article dated February of 1996, which laments how the vans operate under a “female bias.” It has been 11 years since the freshman class of the 1995-1996 year graduated. I suspect it takes a certain amount of truth to float a rumor that long.

Given such a consistent narrative of student discord, I can’t help but view the recent consolidation of SafeRides with the Duke Hospital van service as a bit dubious. The parking and transportation administration may claim that the service for students remains the same, and the merger with Hospital vans may make sense budget-wise, yet it’s also a convenient way to step away from the service’s pretense of safety, the issue at the heart of its constant rebuke. What’s become of the whole idea behind SafeRides as a transportation network helping to reduce the risks associated with an urban campus at night? If an inadequate amount of vans and dispatchers were already spread too thinly across Duke’s wide campus to provide timely and dependable transport, consolidating the service is not a solution. Then again, that depends on the kind of solution you’re looking for.

Duke Van Service solves the problems of SafeRides by, well, not being SafeRides. Although such a fix skips over any concern for campus safety, perhaps the administration is right when they say nothing has really changed with the service except the name (don’t call it safe anymore). And to be honest, this is a lot more straightforward. Students had long come to view SafeRides as only a provisional form of transportation, not the reliable ride system argued for in their complaints. It was always a better idea than a reality. Rapid transport on a campus of 8,610 acres is no easy task, especially as danger only needs a few moments to act. Perhaps this downshift from SafeRides was unavoidable from the beginning.

My own van comes at 11:53, cruising up the street, flashing the yellow lights on its roof as if to signal it recognizes me as its caller. It’s a white 12-seater behemoth and empty, as evidenced by the clatter it makes coming over the potholes on lower Alexander Drive.