ACCORDING TO a recent court decision, the shuttle bus stop at the Science Center illegally stopped traffic on Oxford Street.

No problem, said Harvard. We'll just move the stop a few feet over towards Memorial Hall, where a Harvard-owned driveway shields passengers from traffic and vice-versa.

No problem? Uh-uh. Big problem.

To begin with, nobody ever really waited for the shuttle out on Oxford Street anyway. Except in unusually warm weather, everybody waiting for the shuttle to the Quad hung out inside the Science Center, behind glass doors. This spot offered a clear view of the shuttle as it rounded Memorial Hall from Cambridge Street and left students plenty of time to get to it's stop in time.

SINCE THE stop has been moved nothing has changed. People still wait inside the warmth of the Science Center until they see the approaching bus and then run across the street to the Memorial Hall driveway. End result: At peak hours, the 40 people crossing Oxford Street en masse obstruct just as much traffic as ever.

Not content to leave bad enough alone, Cambridge bureaucrats also decided to outlaw the Cambridge Common shuttle stop, saying it too illegally blocked traffic.

More than a year ago the city officials removed an entire lane of bus stops from that area and replaced them with parking meters. Now it has finally dawned on them that the last two parking spaces take up bus stop space.

Cambridge proposes now to make room for a stop across from the Sheraton Commander Hotel. What's the point? Once you walk all the way to the Commander, you're just about at the Quad anyway. Cambridge may as well decide to declare the entire shuttle bus route illegal.

CAMBRIDGE'S NEW shuttle diplomacy calls for Harvard to rethink the shuttle system. Herewith, the annual call for revamping the route.

A few years ago, the shuttle only ran from the Quad to Garden Street and back. It was fast and efficient in moving people. Now it runs through one-way streets halfway to Somerville every 15 minutes and all the way into Allston every few hours. The closest it gets to Harvard Square on a run to the Quad is Lamont Library. And the schedule is more complicated than diagrams for assembling a Pakistani satellite dish.

The shuttle should run from the Quad to Garden Street and back--every five minutes. No schedule would be necessary. So far, at least, Cambridge has not been able to ban the Old Burying Ground stop, which could be the pickup and drop off stop for this run. The buses would truly shuttle passengers back and forth from the Quad.

This new shuttle should run on Saturday, as well, especially during exam periods when a walk through the snow can make Quadlings late for their finals.

Trips to the Kennedy School, for one thing, would be a thing of the past. God only knows where Kennedy School students take the shuttle bus. To the Square? Who would rather wait for a shuttle than walk three blocks? To the B-School? Also not very far. To the Quad? The way the shuttle system is set up now, a journey from the K-School to Currier House can take up to 42 minutes, not including waiting time.

Harvard is unlikely to eliminate stops at the B-School and K-School because these faculties help to pay the shuttle's annual budget. But in the interest of efficiency and making life at the Quad more pleasant, the College should shell out the extra few thousand bucks it would take each year. After all, who wants to live in wonderful suites in the suburbs if you can't get to them?