Council members, pictured above earlier this year, listened to the Student Life Committee’s report on the recently launched UVAirBus program last night. The program will undergo further review before resuming next semester for Spring Break. Photo by Bennett Sorbo.

Student Council’s Student Life Committee announced last night that the UVAirBus program will postpone its next run until Spring Break and will not operate prior to Winter Break as originally planned.

UVAirBus, which Council launched this semester, was created to shuttle students to and from the Richmond International Airport for $10 each way and to and from the Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport for $5 each way before and after breaks. UVAirBus ran for the fist time last week during the Thanksgiving Break, and more than 200 people used the service, Mathur said.

In making the decision, committee members cited a need for more time to look at feedback from the program’s participants, as well as a crunch for time in figuring out the specific dates and times that UVAirBus would run before and after Winter Break.

“There’s not a lot of time between now until we finish evaluating different aspects of the Thanksgiving run until Winter Break,” committee Co-Chair Aagya Mathur said. “We do have a lot of interest, but it will not be feasible to put together a schedule before then.”

Mathur emphasized, though, that this program has not ended.

“This is not going away even though [we are] not doing it over Christmas break,” she said, adding that they will use this time to channel their efforts for the program’s next run during Spring Break.

Council President John Nelson agreed, noting that though the UVAirbus program required a lot of time and effort on Council’s part, it was worth it.

“It’s in incredibly successful program and we got tons of positive feedback,” Nelson said.

Additionally, Mathur noted that the committee hopes to expand the program to D.C. airports in the future.

“We are keeping in touch with the International Studies Office about their services to the D.C. airports,” she said. “We’re also working … to collaborate with them make sure we don’t overlap.”

Though many students were enthusiastic about the program, others still prefer to ride with friends.

“Personally, I’d rather ride with one of my friends, but it’s definitely a very useful thing on specific dates,” Engineering graduate student Anirban Chatterjee said. Mathur added that the program could have been more successful if the committee had taken more time to reach out to students, explaining that Council sent out a poll to gauge interest in the program only three or four weeks before tickets went on sale. By that time, “a lot of people … had already made travel plans,” she said.

Mathur added that her committee will schedule the UVAirBus’ next run well in advance, with the hope of releasing the UVAirBus schedule for both Spring Break and the end of the spring semester by February, so that students will have plenty of time to coordinate their Spring Break travel plans.