Picture this. It’s 1 a.m. in the wee hours of the morning, and you are stumbling out of the Currier ten man. Bleary-eyed, you squint at PassioGo (rip) and try to figure out how the heck you are supposed to get back to Mather. Joke’s on you: only the overnight loop is running, and the next one isn’t coming for 30 minutes, and it won’t even get you back to the concrete towers. You decide the best course of action is just to splurge on the $12 Uber.

It’s 8 a.m., and you are just finishing up your sports practice in the stadium, and you hop on the shuttle, destined to go back to Pfoho, only to realize that you got on the Allston Loop and you, in fact, will not be brought back to the Quad. You didn’t even know there were shuttles that didn’t go to the Quad. What’s the point of the shuttle then?

It’s 2:25 p.m., and you have a class in Boylston at 2:45. However, it’s the middle of January and the snow is coming at you sideways, and all you want is to take the shuttle your university so graciously supplies. You figure 25 minutes is plenty of time, so you wait for the shuttle, as Citymapper says it will be here in just two minutes. Well, two minutes turns into 20, and now you are sliding through black ice just trying to get to the seminar your advisor said you had to be in.

I say no more. As a junior in Cabot House, I am well acquainted with the Harvard shuttle system. Recently, I’ve been asked my opinion on the new shuttle app, Citymapper, versus its predecessor, PassioGo. The truth is that the app is not the issue. No amount of new features, shaky reliability, or different graphics can fix the fundamental issues that plague the Harvard Shuttle system. Currently, there are nine different shuttle routes. Nine. Why? I have no clue. We have an undergraduate campus so small that I can get from one end to the other (Quad to SEC) in eight minutes by bike, 15 minutes running, and 25 minutes walking. There is absolutely no reason that one shuttle cannot circumnavigate campus in 30 minutes or 40 max, factoring in stoppage time.

Thus, I propose a new system: a loop to end all loops. Through meticulous Google Maps planning and contemplative thoughts on my Quad walk, I have devised an eight-stop shuttle system that allows for full campus coverage. Those eight stops include: The Quad, Cambridge Commons South, Kirkland, the Stadium, the SEC, Mather, the Inn, and Cambridge Commons North. How would this help? You ask. Well, I’ve thought about this, too. Instead of nine loops with stops that even a quadling couldn’t articulate, we’d have one shuttle loop. We put all of the shuttle buses on this one loop. Hypothetically, you would only need six shuttles on the loop at any given time to have a shuttle come every five minutes at any given stop, eight for a five-minute guarantee.

Picture this. You go to any of the known shuttle stops (no more wondering how to get back to the Quad from the Yard), and a shuttle will come EVERY FIVE MINUTES. I know people who ask to leave class early just to catch a shuttle that won’t return for another twenty. Desperate times call for desperate measures. If Harvard cares about attendance, this is the solution. No more excuses for being late to class, no more asking to leave early.

Once you get on that shuttle, you would know exactly where it was going and exactly where to get off. You would know the route like the back of your hand. Students wouldn’t need PassioGo or Citymapper or whatever the new iteration we’ll have next semester. The route is simple, reliable. You could travel from one end of the campus (Quad -> Stadium, SEC -> Cambridge Commons North) in 15 minutes flat. No longer is the Quad a sentence of exile on Housing Day. Just a simple, easy, ten-minute shuttle away.

And I am a selfless petitioner. Do I, as a quadling, think that the shuttle needs to stop at Mather/the Inn/Kirkland? No. But I understand that we are proposing a dramatic change and some river Houses may need to be eased into it. They still covet a ride across the river that could be a ten-minute walk, and that’s okay.

But what if you’re at Mather and need to get to the SEC? Or at Lamont and want a ride home to Kirkland? I have a simple solution. Walk to another shuttle stop, or walk to your destination. Currently, the stop outside Lamont doesn’t even take you to the Quad. You are the ones always bragging about how much more convenient being in the river is than being in the Quad. Let’s level the playing field and adopt the one-route policy. Time to test that theory out, folks.

I am willing to flesh out the nitty-gritty details of stops and exact routes down to Cambridge’s many one-way streets. All I want, as a distant resident of Cabot House, is a system that finally works for me, instead of making me late to class. We hold so many gripes towards the university, from the new grade cap to the loss of HUDS takeout containers. So why not fix a problem that would likely save the university money (one route = fewer buses) and win them accolades from the student body they continually manage to aggravate? To the deans: the ball is in your court.