Students have reported delays of up to an hour for the OUSU safety bus.
The bus is run as a joint scheme between Oxford University and Oxford Brookes, with both paying £10,000 a year to subsidise the cost of running the bus.
However, only 30% of the bus’s passengers are University students, the remainder coming from Brookes.
The programme costs around £30-35,000 a years to run. The portion of this not covered by University subsidies is made up from the £1 donations those who travel on the bus are asked to pay, as well as sponsorship from Domino’s pizza and the Oxford University Press. Both companies have advertising on the vehicle. This covers the costs of hiring the buses, insurance and petrol.
Some students phoning the bus helpline have revealed that they been told they will have to wait for between 40 and 60 minutes before the bus can reach them. Reasons for the long waits include the service being short-staffed or in another place at the time of calling.
One Oxford student, who asked not to be named, phoned the safety bus on a Saturday night and was told she would have to wait 40 minutes for the bus.
Her journey from The Regal on Cowley Road to St John’s college would normally take less time to walk than to wait for the bus. “Needless to say,” she told Cherwell, “I went in my skimpy skirt and high heels alone back to St John’s.”
Cherwell phoned the service at 2am on a Monday night. After trying 4 times over the course of a 15 minute period we were told we would have to wait about 40 minutes for the bus to reach us in Cowley.
Katherine Wall, OUSU Vice-President (Women), said that the long waiting times were in part due to a shortage of volunteers, which means that some nights they cannot run both buses which operate as part of the scheme.
There are currently around 90 student volunteers who run the service as drivers and coordinators. Only 3 of these students come from Oxford University. OUSU is currently running a campaign both to increase usage of the bus and to get more University students to volunteer.
The bus can cater for between 300 to 450 students in a week. Its busiest evenings are Monday and Wednesday, as these are clubbing nights for Brookes students.
The long waiting times reported are a concern in a city where crime rates are well above the national average. In 2008/9 rates of violent crimes in Oxford were twice the average in England as a whole (29.9 in Oxford versus a 15.0 average countrywide). 1.3 out of every 1000 Oxford inhabitants are the victims of crimes of a sexual nature compared with only 0.9 in the rest of the country.
The bus has no timetable and will pick people up from anywhere and drop them anywhere within the Oxford ring road.
Lucie Acraman, who now co-ordinates the volunteers for the bus, has been volunteering herself since 2006. She first used the service in her 1st year at Oxford Brookes University.
She said, “I liked the atmosphere on the bus. It was much nicer than taking taxis. I decided to volunteer in my second year to get to know people and give something back.
“My worst experiences on the bus are definitely being mobbed by over 50 drunk students when we pulled up outside a club to pick up a caller. It’s not easy fending off lots of people trying to get on one bus but we obviously couldn’t take everyone in one go,” she said.
“The busiest times of the night are always between 2am and 3am when the clubs close. After 3am we take no more calls but the night doesn’t really finish until 4am when we drop off the last people.
“Most people behave well on the bus but we occasionally have to throw people off if they’re acting unsafely. People aren’t generally sick on the bus itself particularly since we have a policy where we fine people who throw up. Mostly people will stop the bus or use the bag provided.
“We always try to make sure we see people get into their houses. When people are in a bad way we’ve even sometimes had to put them into bed and find a house mate to look after them. We’ve had to take people to hospital a few times before as well – particularly the nights when the clubs run roller discos!”
First year Brasenose lawyer Eilidh Brown said, “I can understand why people at our university don’t want to volunteer. I just don’t think I would have the time.
“The service isn’t as integral to Oxford University students as it is for Brookes’ students. We just don’t live as far away.”
The Safety bus scheme has been running since 2002 and was originally started by Oxford Brookes University. At that time it was the first scheme of its kind in the country but it has now been adopted by several other universities including Southampton, Bradford and Keele. The bus is now run as a joint scheme between the two universities in Oxford.
The Safety bus works every night from 9pm – 3am apart from Sundays when the service stops running at 1am.
