Beginning Saturday, Jan. 14, Temple University’s Flight program will launch a new East Loop as part of its regularly scheduled nightly shuttle service. With the addition of the new loop, Flight will provide service to more than 50 stops located within the university’s patrol zone. 

The new loop will service several residences in which a number of Temple students live, including University Village and Kardon/Atlantic Apartments. An ADA-compliant vehicle will also be dedicated to servicing this route. 

“The new East Loop is in response to direct feedback that we received from students,” said Mark Gottlieb, senior associate director of Operations and Logistics. “We found that we have a lot of students who live at this part of the patrol zone who were not able to take advantage of Flight services, so this will look to rectify that.” 

The addition of the East Loop comes after Flight was relaunched as a fixed-route service this past August at the beginning of the fall semester. Prior to that, the service was offered as an on-demand ride request service. 

Service hours for Flight are seven days a week between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m., and a shuttle typically reaches each drop-off and pickup location every 15 minutes. That will be the case with the new loop as well, which, like the other loops, can also be tracked in real time via the Transloc app. 

“The goal in our metric is 15 minutes, so it'll be close to that. It might be less, and it might be a little bit more at times, but we have tested it, and it’s been pretty consistent,” Gottlieb said. 

Moving forward, the university will continue to evaluate the Flight service and make adjustments whenever necessary. A transportation consultant will be issuing a report on the service in the months to come. 

“A consultant was deployed this fall to evaluate the services we have provided up to this point. They haven't issued their final report yet, but we are looking forward to getting that. We’re always looking to improve the service,” Gottlieb said. 

For more information on Flight, visit the service’s website.