Pembroke College Cambridge

Taxi voucher scheme

Any undergraduate or graduate student who is concerned about walking home alone in the late evening to hostels in Grange Road, Selwyn Gardens, Barton Road, or Newnham, and who hasn’t been able to make arrangements to walk home with a fellow student, should turn up at the Porters’ Lodge at 10.30pm, 11.30pm or 12.30am, to see whether anyone else is in the same situation. If no one else turns up with the same destination by five minutes after the agreed times, then the Porter will call a cab and the bill will be paid by the College.  It may be that the cab takes more than one student to more than one destination, and students should expect to have to wait some time for a cab to arrive after it has been ordered.

If the Porter is called away from the Lodge at any one of these prearranged times to discover a student or students waiting, they will exercise their discretion to provide a taxi for anyone who has been waiting for a while; however, anyone turning up then should expect to have to wait until the next agreed time before a cab is ordered. The Porter will also exercise their discretion in cases occurring later at night.

Finally, remember that it will always be more convenient to walk home with friends, or to ride a bike with functioning lights. And you should in any case be prepared to follow main, well-lit roads after dark (thus using Trumpington Street if in doubt, rather than Tennis Court Road, en route to Lensfield Road and Panton Street hostels), even this adds to your journey time. Walk briskly, and make sure that you are alert to others in your immediate surroundings. This means avoiding advertising the fact that you have a mobile phone worth stealing; not being distracted by music or a conversation will also give you more time to notice and react to suspicious behaviour around you. And if you are threatened, or told to hand over your property, the police advice is to hand it over. You can always replace property.