With the expansion of the Davis campus, talk of shuttle service from the main Weber State University campus to the Davis campus has taken place in the chambers of the WSU student senate. The new building, currently in construction at the Davis campus, will be home to the interior design program, the construction management program and even some nursing classes.
The new building will be equivalent to the Shepherd Union Building, as it will have general classrooms as well as study areas and food.
“It’ll have a union component that’s not currently at Davis, like ballrooms and food service,” said Brady Harris, the senate president and WSU Student Association legislative vice president. “It opens in the fall of next year.”
According to Harris, there once was shuttle service to and from the main campus to Davis, but it was discontinued due to insufficient ridership. The cost of the shuttle couldn’t be justified because so few students used it. Harris said there has been talk of starting the shuttle back up again due to the Davis campus expansion.
“But now the conversation’s happening that, because of the new building that’s opening up out there and expansion is going to happen, especially with whole programs moving down there, students want us to look into trying to get that shuttle back, especially for the residence hall students.”
The main question concerns how many students will actually use the shuttle.
“We’re going to use the Davis campus senator and the residence hall senator and try to get some numbers of students who would actually use it,” Harris said.
According to state law, the shuttle cannot be funded by student fees or tuition, so revenue from parking passes would be used to fund the shuttle service. If that doesn’t work out best, the student senate has a couple of options and possibilities to look into. UTA bus routes currently service the Davis campus, but the ride from Ogden to Layton is more than an hour long, and there are quite a few stops.
Kelsey Spaulding, the College of Applied Science and Technology senator, said she thinks a lot more students will be attending classes at the Davis campus due to the expansion. Once the move of new programs is under way, ridership of the possible shuttle would go up.
“With the changing of getting a new building down there, I think a lot more people will go down there,” Spaulding said. “And some of the programs that are up here at Weber at the Ogden campus will be going down to the Davis campus, and that will increase that move too.”
When the need for a Davis campus shuttle is proven, the talk of the shuttle can become more serious. Kimberly Tribe, the College of Education senator, also mentioned the importance of the new building being constructed at Davis campus. According to Tribe, it really comes down to how many students will use the service.
“So it’s a lot of surveying students who use both campuses, who use both campuses on the same day, that kind of stuff,” Tribe said. “Or maybe we’ll do like a Weber State shuttle like the one from the Dee, but we don’t know, so we’ll have to see how many people are to use it.”
Students can voice their opinions and bring up problems and concerns during the weekly student senate meeting today at 2:30 p.m. in the Shepherd Union Building.
