For Pat Bugas ‘10, getting to and from the airport this year has been no small feat.

“The first time I tried going home it was hellish,” recalled Bugas of his journey to the San Francisco Airport (SFO) during Thanksgiving break.

Rather than pay for a pricey shuttle, Bugas decided to walk his heavy bag to the Palo Alto CalTrain station — only to miss the train and take a one-and-a-half hour long bus ride to the airport.

But starting next week, travelers like Bugas will no longer have to scramble to make their way to the airport. A new shuttle service, sponsored by the Undergraduate Senate and Graduate Student Council (GSC), will run every hour to SFO and every two hours to the San Jose airport (SJC) next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday for $5. Students can make reservations online to save a seat on one of three 47-passenger buses that will be shuttling students starting at noon on Wednesday.

“The idea for the shuttle has been around for awhile, but we decided this year finally to bring it about,” Senator Jonathan Kass ‘10, co-sponsor of the shuttle bill, said in an email to The Daily. “I know that when I go home for breaks, I’m faced with the choice of an expensive SuperShuttle or public transportation with difficult time schedules and a lot of waiting,”

“There was a ride-share program that last year’s executives endorsed — but it largely failed,” said ASSU Vice President Mondaire Jones ‘09, the bill’s author. “There was a lack of coordination and it was nowhere near as organized as something as an airport shuttle.”

Jones said the process for using this year’s shuttle is simple: go online, place a reservation for $5, print out confirmation and show up for the shuttle.

“The primary motivation of this is to be a service to the students — which is why we’re not charging a hefty sum of money,” he said. “The $5 is just an incentive to get people to show up to their appointment.”

Due to a lack of successful shuttle services in the past, the ASSU will use this year’s pilot program to assess how well the service works and will adjust the service accordingly for the future.

“The initiative this quarter is a pilot effort,” Jones said. “We want to gauge how many people are interested in the service.”

Students, particularly freshmen who are not allowed to have cars on campus, were receptive to the idea of a shuttle service.

“I think it will be popular especially with people who live far away,” said Caroline Watts ‘10. “I definitely think it will be used a lot.”

“I have a bunch of friends who usually have to hire a SuperShuttle,” Bugas added, “so I think that [the shuttle service] would be pretty popular among a good portion of people.”

Jones noted the ASSU would ultimately like to receive special fees funding for the shuttle service if it proves successful.

Funding for the service was drawn from the General Fee Reserve — extra money that is not being used by the Undergraduate Senate. The GSC also contributed some money, though not as much as the planning committee had hoped.

“We’re perfectly fine about that,” said Jones in response to the GSC’s decision to fund $3,500 for the service, only half of what they were expected to contribute. “We were not upset at all. We expect undergrads to use this service more than grad students and that’s the reality of it.”

“Regardless of if this project succeeds to the degree that we expect and hope it to, I’m very glad we are trying it out,” Kass said. “We see that the student body has a need, and we get proactive about it. That is our job on ASSU.”

Both undergraduate and graduate students can view schedules and make reservations for airport shuttles at http://egroups.stanford.edu/.