Marguerite Procuring Specific returns to campus

After a three-year hiatus, the Marguerite Procuring Specific returned to campus Friday, working between the Stanford campus, the San Antonio Procuring Heart in Mountain View and the Palo Alto Transit Heart. 

In accordance with schedules on the Stanford Transportation web site, the shuttle is now obtainable to riders hourly each Friday from about 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. along with weekends from round 9 a.m. to eight p.m. The College formally introduced the shuttle’s return on March 28, and the finalized schedule and route was posted on April 28. 

Elizabeth Park, GSC transportation committee co-chair and third-year chemistry Ph.D. scholar, wrote in a press release to The Every day referring  to the Procuring Specific restoration as “a lift to campus life” and expressed pleasure  that she and her lab colleagues now have a route from the Lorry I. Lokey Laboratory for Chemistry and Organic Sciences to the restaurant Chili’s, jokingly calling it the “Chili’s Specific.”

“We’re taking the Chili’s specific each Friday for these child again ribs and scorching fajitas,” Park wrote.

Past bolstering campus life, college students have additionally expressed optimism that the Procuring Specific’s return, even briefly, might be a stepping stone to the return of different now-defunct Marguerite strains.

“It’s nearly a foot within the door for increasing the Marguerite,” Nick Harvey ’26 stated. “The N and O strains nonetheless aren’t again even after a number of scholar stress on the administration. Hopefully, if college students journey the Procuring Specific, we will use this chance to indicate there’s an actual demand for extra public transit [and] for extra Marguerite strains.” 

The restoration of the Procuring Specific – at present within the type of a one-year pilot program – follows months of advocacy spearheaded by members of the Graduate Pupil Council (GSC). The advocacy has broadly addressed considerations of affordability, together with calls to extend the graduate scholar stipend, pushing for transparency on the calculation of minimal wage changes and extra not too long ago unionization efforts. 

In accordance with College spokesperson Stett Holbrook, Stanford shall be monitoring how ridership of the pilot restoration compares with pre-pandemic ridership. Holbrook added that, on the opportunity of a full restoration of the shuttle, “metrics for assessing the Procuring Specific are beneath overview.”  

Lawrence Berg, GSC transportation committee co-chair and fourth-year chemistry Ph.D. scholar, nonetheless, shared extra pessimistic emotions on the place of the Procuring Specific. 

“At this level, I might finally characterize this win as a concession that the College gave since they selected to not transfer ahead with every other measures from our Invoice on Affordability,” Berg wrote.

As regards to the Procuring Specific, the GSC’s Invoice on Affordability issued a suggestion titled “Mobility in Submit-Pandemic Period: A Giant Demand for a Small Supply,” noting that “in 2019, 91,936 riders used the Procuring Specific line to entry essential groceries and housing provides, that are both tough to acquire by way of bike or moreover costly by automobile rental/rideshare.”

The Procuring Specific initially shut down in September 2020, reportedly attributable to a “lack of parking income.” The Marguerite’s N and O strains, which supplied transportation to the Palo Alto Transit Heart throughout weekends and at evening, had been shut down at first of the pandemic in April 2020.

Harvey careworn that college students with no prior expertise with the Procuring Specific or the N and O strains, which the GSC has additionally advocated to revive, must be made conscious “of the larger entry to public transit that there was earlier than.” 

“I don’t need college students to overlook that we had a greater Marguerite system and I feel lots of people are forgetting that,” Harvey stated.

Past simply the GSC, different college students have advocated for the return of the Procuring Specific. Vivian Auduong ’23 has known as for the Procuring Specific’s return utilizing her Instagram web page stanfordnumtots, brief for Stanford New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teenagers. The account posted memes to unfold consciousness of the shuttle within the days previous to its restoration.

“It’s a kind of issues that’s actually humorous but in addition makes you concentrate on the profound affect that public transit and good city planning can have for individuals in every single place,” Auduong stated. “I might encourage everybody to observe these meme pages, make their very own memes and get actually enthusiastic about transit as a result of it’s a present.”