General Information

LAST DAY of LOOP Service: Monday May 11th

LOOP Service resumes: Wednesday August 26, 2009

The Service

Who can Ride

Requesting a Ride

The Service

The Loop provides intra-campus rides for eligible faculty, staff, and students with disabilities. The Loop cart is a small golf cart which provides rides on a first come first served basis, with priority given to rides needed for an academic purpose. The Loop operates Monday through Friday, 7:45am to 5:30pm only on the core campus. The Loop cart area of service is bounded by, and does not cross these four streets: Oxford Street, Hearst Street, Gayley-Piedmont Road, and Bancroft Ave. Don't forget that buildings on the edge of the campus can usually be conveniently reached by riding the campus perimeter shuttle. The Loop operates only on days of class instruction during Fall and Spring, but not during Summer.

Who Can Ride

The Loop cart golf cart service was created to assist persons with mobility difficulties to more easily navigate the steep campus terrain. There is no longer an application process to establish eligibility. If you are someone who has significant difficulty physically walking the distance between two core campus locations, simply follow the instructions below to obtain a ride.

If you are a wheelchair user and need to ride while remaining seated in your wheelchair (rather than collapsing the wheelchair and transferring to the Loop cart seat), please indicate to the Loop Driver at the time of your ride request that you will need to remain seated in your wheelchair during the ride.

Requesting a Ride - No Reservations

Do not call the Loop Driver for any purpose other than to request a ride (call 642-2795 for all other inquiries).

The Loop does not take reservations. It offers eligible riders a ride on a first come first served basis, with priority given to eligible students using the Loop for an academic purpose.

To request a Loop ride, call the Loop cart at (510) 586-LOOP (5667) when you are ready to be picked up (it usually takes less than five minutes for the Loop cart to arrive at the destination where you have requested pick up). The Loop driver is not authorized to wait for a rider not at the pickup point when the Loop cart arrives, and will drive on if you are not there.

When calling the Loop cart driver to request a ride, be sure to carefully explain the exact location where you want to be picked up. If the Loop cart has not arrived within ten minutes, you may want to call back to be sure there is no confusion. If the voice message system (rather than a Loop driver) answers when you call (510) 586-LOOP (5667), leave the phone number where you can be reached and the Loop driver will call you back within ten minutes.

Remember: the Loop is not designed to enable a rider to reliably traverse the distance between any two points on the campus within the precise ten minutes between specific classes scheduled back to back, e.g., one class ends at 1:50pm and next class starts elsewhere at 2pm. Remember that pedestrian pathways are most crowded in the transition time between classes. We recommend that a student with a disability allow for a minimum of 30 minutes between classes if planning to use the Loop service for transportation to get to a class on time, or otherwise explore alternative solutions with his/her DSP specialist.

Information about the Loop is available online at http://Loop.berkeley.edu

04/21/09