To accommodate the dozens of commuters who will be forced to park further away from their destinations due to construction on the Engineering Sciences Center on the south side of Cummings Hall, the College has started offering enhanced shuttle bus service around campus and the town of Hanover.
The shuttle, which began service March 22, connects Tuck Drive and the Dewey parking lot with popular campus locations such as Thompson Arena and the Green.
The new shuttle service represents a merger between the Dartmouth-sponsored Dewey Parking Shuttle and the town of Hanover"sponsored Thompson Parking Shuttle. The shuttle runs every 10 minutes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and is free and open to graduate students, undergraduates and town residents.
The permanently-improved shuttle service is meant to compensate for the loss of approximately half of the available parking spaces in the lot next to Cummings Hall in the Thayer School of Engineering. However, it will also benefit residents of the River dormitories, who often bemoan their distance from more central campus locations.
"It's meant to connect the parking lot, but the secondary need is to get around campus," said William Barr, the director of Dartmouth's Fiscal and Auxiliary Services division.
Students agreed with this assessment of the possible benefits of the shuttle service.
"It can be a bit of a pain to get to my classes up by the Green. The shuttle service sounds like it would help," River resident Yukako Honda '07 said. "I would definitely use it."
The shuttle does not service A-Lot, but it does benefit students trying to get to the Green who live in off-campus apartments on or near Lebanon and Summer Streets.
The shuttle can also potentially be used as a way to get to Dick's House, the College's main on-campus health facility.
The shuttle is designed not only to compensate for parking space lost during construction but also to remedy a permanent loss of space after the Engineering Sciences Center project's completion. This loss will result in parking reassignments for some graduate students who will be moved to less favorable locations such as the Dewey Field parking lot.
The shuttle begins at Dewey Field, goes up and down Tuck Drive and then goes by the Green on its way to Thompson Arena.
The Engineering Sciences Center, whose projected ground-breaking date is in the fall, will house a Unified Projects Laboratory featuring a student engineering design and project fabrication facility.
