Turnstiles Spare Notre Dame Students Long Wait at New Dining Facility

Thanks to newly installed speed gate turnstiles, University of Notre Dame students no longer shiver in the cold while they wait outside in line to enter the dining hall.

Anyone who lives in South Bend, Ind., knows that the winters there can be brutal. University of Notre Dame students experienced this cold, hard fact when they had to wait in line at the entrance to the campus dining hall.

The long wait was the result of the school relying on employees to welcome students to the dining area and verify their access privileges. Since the process was done manually, it was slow and bottlenecks often caused a line of students to stretch well outside the dining hall, even in winter.

“Inside, we had one or two staff members taking the students’ cards, swiping them on a terminal, and then the students entered through one set of doors,” says University of Notre Dame Senior Business and Technology Specialist for Auxiliary Operations Robert Casarez. “During peak dining hours, particularly at lunch when all the classes end at the same time, the lines would stretch out the door. In the winter, that meant standing in freezing temperatures and the dining staff setting up patio heaters to try to make the wait somewhat comfortable.”

With the installation of the speed gate turnstiles, students now tap their own access cards on the readers. This has doubled the number of people who enter, thereby increasing the entry speed ten-fold and eliminating the line outside.

In fact, the speed gate turnstiles have such high throughput that food service often can’t keep up. The university is now using the data from the access control system to adjust the food production schedules.

There were initial concerns from the dining hall staff and students about what would happen to the employees who previously greeted everyone and swiped the cards. In response to these concerns, they were successfully moved to ambassador roles in the dining hall and continue to work to make students feel welcome.

The new speed gate turnstiles are also linked to the fire system for extra safety, which the fire chief was happy to learn. And the new install was a great incentive for students to get a new card to use in the dining hall, which sped up the transition to the new cards.

Notre Dame’s experience with speed gate turnstiles at its dining hall has been so positive that Casarez’s team is looking at other locations where they could possibly be used. Other departments, such as athletics, now have a proven onsite installation to review as they assess their options to improve their own facilities.