UCSC students! I have a (genius) idea for a campus hitchhiking system and I need your help!

If you are a UCSC student, then you see the many many other students standing on the road or at a bus stop, sticking out their thumb, looking for a ride somewhere on campus. You might be one of these hitchhikers or you might be one of the drivers (or you might be a strictly bus user in which case, disregard this completely).

Normally I take the bus, but have occasionally needed to hitchhike from either somewhere near Bay and Mission up to campus or from one end of campus to another. Some really nice people do indeed stop and give a lift, but more often than not, people are left waiting there until a bus comes or they end up walking.

Now I have also been a driver who has picked up hitchhikers. I think most people are nice enough (it being Santa Cruz and all) that they would pick people up. Plus, since we're on campus it's generally safe to pick up hitchhikers. I think the problem is though that drivers are not super willing to pick people up merely because they do not know how far the hitchhiker would like to go.

When I'm a driver, I'm hesitant to pick people up in fear that they want to go a lot further than I need to. Most of the time I will drive past without even stopping because I don't want to stop and talk to them just to have it not work out and to keep driving anyway. Perhaps if drivers knew where the hitchhiker needs to go, they'd be more willing to pick them up.

My proposal is this: we create a hand signal system (instead of just the thumb) so that drivers passing by know where hitchhikers need to go.

For example:

• the standard thumb = Bay Tree

• 2 fingers / peace sign = Crown/Merrill

• 3 fingers = Colleges 9 & 10

....and so on. A fist or the surfer sign could be other hand signals too when we run out of fingers. The idea would be that there would be one hand signal for every bus stop on campus. And maybe a couple for really common places off campus and downtown. I would create a whole bunch of flyers with the system on it and post them at every bus stop and in the parking lots too, so both hitchhikers and drivers can see them. I'd start a facebook group and perhaps even contact the school to see if they'd help send out emails.

So let me know what you think. Do you think this would help? Do you think it would work? If you think it's a good idea, please help me develop it. What stops other than the campus bus stops do you think would be good?

What sparked this idea was a story my friend told me of a hitchhiking experience. He was standing at the road amongst a whole bunch of hitchhikers and no one was stopping for any of them. He took out a sheet of paper and wrote his destination on it in Sharpie and got picked up almost instantly afterward.

We all see this in the movies anyway, people on the side of the highway holding up a cardboard sign. But most UCSC hitchhikers aren't gonna whip out a sign every time they want to hitchhike nor do they always have a pen thick enough that people can see what's written on the sign. Perhaps this hand signal thing will work?