One resounding issue among college students is the question of transportation. Especially at Boston College, very few students have cars on campus, leading them to search out other means to travel and get into the city or to the grocery store. This question usually boils down to choosing either a rideshare service, like Uber or Lyft, or taking the T, Boston’s rapid transit subway system.
Unfortunately, the MBTA is not the best in any aspect. Slow zones and spread out stops—especially further from the city—along with the issue that you must have a CharlieCard to ride make the T bothersome to use. In a sneaky effort to avoid paying, you can try to jump on the back of a car, but conductors may only open the first door or call you out in front of a car full of people. Many, from students to professionals, resort to rideshare apps because of their efficiency, but these are far more expensive modes of transportation, especially for the average college student. On top of price and efficiency factors, there is the consideration of safety, whether it be isolating yourself in someone else’s car or entering a public space in which anyone could enter unsupervised. So what is the best option for the busy and broke student?
If you are someone who chooses to use rideshare services, you still have to make the decision between using Uber or Lyft. There is a murmur that Uber screens their drivers more thoroughly than Lyft, but based on each company’s website, there does not seem to be much of a difference. Uber screens their prospective drivers using a third-party provider called Checkr that performs a background check extending seven years, screening for “impaired driving and violent offenses,” and continual checks for “criminal offenses,” according to the Uber website. More specifically, Uber checks for felony convictions, DUI, and sexual violent crime convictions or pending charges. Lyft also uses Checkr to conduct background checks for their prospective drivers. Very similarly to Uber, Lyft screens for convictions of any violent crimes, DUI convictions, or any sexual crime; a driver will also be dismissed if their name appears the National Sex Offender Registry. The check looks at the past seven years just as with Uber, and Lyft also runs continual checks to remain up-to-date.
There seems to be no difference between the two companies in how they determine drivers. Speaking from personal experience, there has been a proportionate number of good and bad experiences with both. I have had more uncomfortable experiences with Uber drivers: murder podcast players, back seat junk drawers, ogling through the rearview mirror and the ultimate “Can I have your Instagram?” from the easily thirty-year-old man while coming back from visiting my parents in the city at one in the afternoon. However, some of the Lyfts I have been in have felt like the roller coaster to my death: speeding right up to red lights and swerving around cars that are actually going the speed limit, as I watch the numbers flash red on their phone screen alerting the driver they are going 20 miles over. Talking to Annahita Riazi ’27, I heard a nightmare story about someone getting into an Uber and realizing their driver was intoxicated as he was “swerving across the lanes.” There are many more stories from students of experiences like Lyft drivers whose backseats and floor are covered in old takeout boxes and trash that, just by the smell, you could tell had been there for weeks.
Since there seems to be no difference in security between these two companies, I often turn to the price difference to make a decision. If not in a rush, I know many who will opt for the T just for its price. On top of this, being in a public space on a designated track grants the rider a sense of security; the T cannot choose its destination unlike Uber or Lyft drivers whom we hand the possibility to take us wherever they desire. The T is not necessarily the safer option, though. Even in the middle of the afternoon, one can come across any number of people in any state of mind. I watched a woman, with her husband and two kids, become a pillow for the man next to her, his head slumping onto her shoulder and slowly slipping down her front as her face painted with the expression of pure discomfort. A man walked onto the T around eleven in the morning with a brown paper lunch bag that he continuously took a swig out of, and he kept walking up to random people to ask where they were going; upon receiving no answer, he would comment on their rudeness and move on to the next person.
There is no shortness of stories surrounding rideshare services and public transportation. Often the negative or the odd spread faster than the good, so every option comes to have its downfalls in terms of safety, efficiency, or price. There is probably no solution to solve the dilemma of the traveling college student other than continuing to share stories of all kinds to create awareness and understanding of what the options are.
Coffee addicted ballerina with a nostalgic attachment to black and white movies and Frankie Valli.
