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The Saferide shuttle service, a free shuttle service to students from 8 a.m.-midnight daily, will be shut down on June 10 due to lack of student use, however a graduate student started an online petition to keep the service going.

Graduate student Michael Neil, who suffers from spina bifida and cerebral palsy which confines him to a wheel chair, said he still values the Saferide service.

He said he feels  the service should not be discontinued.

“I believe that this is a safety and civil rights matter,” he said “I use a power wheelchair which is not often seen in the dark by cars and which often runs aground in drifts of winter snow,”

Neil said he uses the service at least four times a week.

He believes so strongly in the service that he has started a petition on Change.org to keep it going.

The petition now has over 90 signatures from undergrads, grads, professors and alumni, and the number is still growing.

According to Don Enloe, Campus Safety director of Parking and Transportation Services, the service has been running for eight years, but ridership has dropped to only one or two students a night.

“The ridership has decreased dramatically over the past few years to the point that during all of the fall 2011 quarter, only 87 students rode the shuttle,” said Enloe. “That works out to just over one per day.”

Neil said he doesn’t think DU advertised the service enough.

“Few people, know about the service, which, to me, makes this argument suspicious,” he said.

However, Enloe said the service has been discussed at every orientation week and Pioneer Days event for the past few years, and information is posted on DU’s website as well as in the residence halls, so he doubts that students are unaware.

According to Enloe, the service began when the student government asked to partner with the Department of Campus Safety (DCS) to provide a shuttle program.

“We agreed with the idea and the shuttle began eight years ago; we have continued to offer the service even after the Student Senate withdrew their funding out of the program,” he said. “However, the ridership has dropped to a level that it just does not make sense to run the program any longer.”

Enloe said the decision, which was made this February by Parking and Transportation Services, the Vice Chancellor for Business and Financial Affairs and the Provost, was not based on cost.

“The cost of the program is not the issue,” he said. “The issue is whether the money is being invested in a good program or not, one that is being used appropriately.”

He said the student senate withdrew its funding of the program because it did not feel it was a good use of their money.In light of the recent attacks near campus, Enloe said he does not think discontinuing the service will further endanger students.

“The assaults have mostly happened during hours that the shuttle was not running, and some of those assaults happened off campus or off of the shuttle route,” he said. “Even in light of those assaults, ridership did not increase after the assaults occurred.”

In addition, according to Enloe, DCS offers an escort service for students who feel unsafe at any time of the day, which he said will continue.

There will be no new service to replace the Saferide. Neil said he thinks the service is important for promoting safety around campus.

“I am concerned more broadly with the effect of the removal on the safety of students on campus, especially women, although men are also targets of assault,” he wrote in a letter to friends, faculty and women’s groups announcing his reasons for petitioning.

Neil is working to publicize the issue to the DU community. He currently has support from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies and the School of Social Work, which are helping to round up signature for the petition.

In addition, Neil has been asked to speak at the Staff Women’s Network.

Neil said he was told by DCS that he will be able to use the escort service to help him get across campus any time he likes. .

Students, staff and faculty can sign Neil’s petition at www.change.org/petitions/the-administration-of-the-university-of-denver-re-instate-the-saferide-shuttle-program.