The Point-To-Point Express is celebrating its 25th year in operation this school year, and the celebration includes new gifts for students.
UNC Transportation & Parking has added two new 25-passenger shuttle buses and three 40-passenger biodiesel buses. These buses are more fuel-efficient than the older ones they replaced.
“The buses and vans that have been offering service to UNC have certainly served the University community well,” said Than Austin, associate director of UNC Transportation & Parking . “However, the oldest vehicles had been in operation for as many as 19 years, logging a lot of miles. These new vehicles will be more efficient and provide a much better rider experience.”
A new route has been added to the existing grid and will serve southern and western parts of campus. The route runs by Baity Hill Graduate & Family Housing on Mason Farm Road. It will have the same service as other P2P routes, running nightly from 7 p.m. to 4 a.m. during the fall and spring semesters. Transportation & Parking media relations manager Randy Young said there was a high demand from students to add the route.
“That serves a huge student need,” Young said. “We were getting a whole slew of calls in previous years and we were running a lot of miles up on van services. It became much more efficient for us to actually run a fixed route.”
In addition to the new route, P2P will resume service to Granville Towers now that construction has cleared from the area.
P2P started its service to riders with a small fleet of vans in 1992. The service was initially demand-response, and the fixed route was introduced the following August in response to student government recommendations.
“It’s still as popular and as important to the University as ever,” P2P manager Lee McRae, who has been with Transportation & Parking since P2P’s inception, said. “On a busy night, we often transport well over a thousand riders, and we’re serving nearly 200,000 riders a year.”
Efforts by members of the P2P Work Group, a subcommittee of the Advisory Committee on Transportation & Parking, helped bring the new service and vehicle improvements. The group has worked to increase operational hours, as well as provide the addition of summer school fixed-route service and technological advances like student access to real-time vehicle positioning and onboard video cameras.
