By The Editorial Board
Living in the most hectic city on the planet, simple trips to the grocery store can turn into transportation disasters. Fortunately, Fordham students have the option of taking the Ram Van. The van is a safe way home for students traveling alone and a convenient way to get to internships. While it may be popular to complain about the Ram Van and joke about crowded vans, traffic and car sickness, the Ram Van is, in our opinion, one of the best services at Fordham. All of us on staff have our own stories about times the Ram Van has helped us get somewhere just in time, or times when a friendly driver has brightened our days.
Traffic is part of living in New York, but the drivers make every effort to get between campuses as quickly as possible while preserving passenger safety. Drivers, working in conjunction with dispatchers, choose routes based on traffic and will change routes mid-trip if needed. The office also tries to tweet abnormally long travel times as often as possible to help riders make their travel plans accordingly. New York traffic can be a nightmare, but the drivers handle everything thrown their way with a lot of skill.
The vans are clean and are not as crowded as many subway cars, even if you are unlucky enough to be the fourth person squeezed in the backseat of a full van. Passengers can feel comfortable falling asleep, working on laptops or simply relaxing something that cannot be said of all modes of transportation in New York. The drivers accommodate requests for temperature and music changes, and the office takes rider experience feedback seriously.
The drivers are polite, friendly and professional, and put up with far more shenanigans and annoyances from passengers, both drunk and sober, than they should. Throughout all of the headaches, drivers are always courteous. Though Ram Van drivers are some of the best-paid student employees on campus, the extensive hours the Ram Vans provide would not be possible without drivers’ willingness to get up early or give up their weekend nights.
The Ram Van is one of the only services on campus that completely caters to student hours and budgets. The early morning vans accommodate interns who do not wish to pay peak Metro North fare or stand in a packed subway car. The late vans provide a safe return to campus, regardless of a rider’s level of intoxication, and runs later than the Metro North. The Ram Van also conducts student surveys and clearly takes student feedback into account, including providing more cars for peak travel times between Rose Hill and Lincoln Center.
Additionally, the Ram Van has made a lot of improvements over the last two years. It moved into a bigger office, which provides room for students to sit and wait for van, and it migrated van registration onto a much more convenient online system. The Ram Van is one service on campus that is constantly improving with the needs of students in mind.
Furthermore, the Ram Van is a great opportunity for job-seeking students on campus who may not qualify for work study or who have inflexible schedules, and it pays more than minimum wage. Few Fordham students appreciate the difficulty of obtaining insurance coverage for a service provided by all student drivers in a major metropolitan area.
We do not mean to complain about the public transportation that New York offers, but plenty of us have subway horror stories and have to appreciate the alternative the Ram Van provides. We believe that the Ram Van deserves gratitude from riders, rather than complaints. Next time you get on a Ram Van, make sure to thank the driver for all of his or her hard work.
