<p>What an idiotic idea. A lot of students and workers rely on the buses that go through Campus Drive to get to class and work on time. I'm not sure where the new bus stops will be, but I reckon it's gonna be a real pain in the arse for a lot of people. I myself will rely on the ShuttleUM that goes to the Metro to get to work... if they place the bus stop for it at some far-flung location, that's really going to **** me (and plenty of other students) off.</p>
<p>The MTA wants to run the Purple Line through Campus Drive, but UMD is opposed to it... ugh.</p>
<p>First of all, I believe this is incorrect. </p>
<p>I haven’t heard this anywhere and I don’t see anything about them closing Campus Drive this summer in the master plan they cite, either.</p>
<p>It’s probably bad journalism.</p>
<p>Of course, I would like to call some administrators tomorrow morning and ask because this is a big enough deal to double check.</p>
<p>That said, I fully support their opposition against this above ground Purple Line route (though I don’t agree with the current alternative they’re proposing). I believe that if the MTA doesn’t have enough money to run the line underground or otherwise minimize the negative aesthetic impact, they should wait until they do have money rather than implement a permanent eyesore - I personally think the greenline stop is quite convenient as is and stops on campus are completely unnecessary at this point. Eventually I support the purple line on campus, but I support it done right. And I fully support them eventually closing Campus Drive to vehicles. “Public Ivies” like W&M, UVa, UNC-CH, etc. all have much nicer campuses than UMCP imho. North campus is never going to look pretty with those gross high rises, but the remainder of campus suffers from an excess of parking lots, roads, and vehicles. In order for UMD to compete with more prestigious colleges, it should be actively looking to beautify its campus and I support closing down as many roads through campus as possible. Currently Campus Drive is an eyesore that detracts from the beautiful colonial look of the Student Union, Benjamin Building, and Hornbake Plaza. While this may be inconvenient in the short term, in the long term students and professors will adjust (and it will be less of an issue as UMD becomes a more residential campus and moves towards gaurunteeing 4 yrs on campus, which will drive down rental prices in the nearby neighborhoods as well).</p>
<p>Looking toward the long-term it doesn’t make sense to put the purple line above ground on campus drive, and it doesn’t make sense to maintain the current amount of vehicle traffic that runs through campus.</p>
<p>This is for all intents and purposes oooold news, except for the point about them closing campus drive this summer, but again I don’t think that’s true.</p>
<p>Ah, nope, it looks like this may actually be true, but it is just a “test”. I can’t imagine it would be a very effective test since there’s like, zero traffic in the summer compared to normally. </p>
<p>Buttt quite frankly I support this plan to close Campus Drive to traffic 100%. Inconvenient in the short term, sure, but eventually this will help the campus. It’s the administrators’ jobs to look to the long term and hopefully recognize when students are simply thinking about the short term (understandably so since most graduate in a handful of years!).</p>
<p>Great post!
I agree with you a 100%, all the cars and parking lots really make the mall, and the beautiful colonial feel of UMD as an old college really congested and ugly.</p>
<p>Okay, well as long as they keep the Metro shuttle running it won’t be too bad.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with banning cars and such from Campus Drive, but I still think it’s a bad idea to also close off all other transit. I also very much like the idea of the Purple Line going through Campus Drive. I don’t know, to me it makes sense to have a transit system going through the “main artery” of the school. I guess I just value function over form, and I don’t see why UMD has to look like UVA or W&M or UNC. There’s also a bit of a difference between College Park and Charlottesville, Chapel Hill and Williamsburg. College Park is right next to, and somewhat well-connected to the rest of the Washington Metropolitan area. In fact I’d say that one of the defining features of the DC area is that all the suburbs, cities and towns kind of blend into one. They’re well-connected by highways and mass transit, and the DC area is much bigger than Charlottesville or Williamsburg or Chapel Hill. I guess my point is that UMD is in a much different area than any of those schools you listed, so I don’t see why it has to emulate them when it could also go about (smartly) becoming a school with excellent public transportation connections to the massive, vibrant metropolitan area that it’s a part of.</p>
<p>edit: There would also be much less need for all those parking lots if the school was even more mass-transit-accessible.</p>
<p>I really hope they don’t make this a permanent thing though! It seems like such a stupid idea to me to close down campus drive! that’d be a nightmare for dots and the rest of us that rely on all the shuttleum routes that all have a stop in stamp and go up and down campus drive at one point or another! I just can’t imagine how it would be for all of us without that road! So stupid!</p>
<p>DCHurricane, College Park is a suburb - it’s not nearly as built up as Chapel Hill or Charlottesville! Usually campuses in the city or in urban areas are less beautiful because of the high cost of land. So, NYU can’t have a big green lawn…that would come at exhorbitant cost. College Park, on the other hand, already has a MASSIVE campus. There is NO reason it should look urban, because it isn’t. </p>
<p>Function doesn’t have to come at the cost of form. Good planning can incorporate both aspects. Various alternative routes were proposed for the purple line during the early planning stages. Ex. a route coming to the back end of the stadium would both be very convenient to the student union and end parking lots as well as preserve the aesthetic quality of the center of campus (and allow for further aesthetic improvement in the future, rather than permanently divide the campus along a main artery). A route underground, beneath campus drive, was another proposal. </p>
<p>I DO NOT oppose the Purple Line. </p>
<p>Eventually the line should come to campus - I don’t disagree - though the amount of cars you think it will cut down is undubtably exaggerated. However, it should come to campus in a way that thinks about the future, not about the immediate. If we have to hold off several years until the state has the money to put the line underground for at least portion of the campus drive drag, then I believe that is worth it. There’s already a metro stop convenient to campus so the need for a purple line stop right in front of the student union is hardly imminent. I can deal with temporary traffic and ugliness to ensure there isn’t a permanent problem for the university into the indefinite future.</p>
<p>It frustrates me that students can’t see beyond their immediate inconveniences and concerns. There’s a clear “most desirable” solution here. Put the line underground. No, we don’t have enough money for it now. Well then, wait until we do. </p>
<p>Now, if it’s between Campus Drive and some other insane suggestions the campus has been putting forth under the intense pressure of the MTA, I would pick Campus drive. But I think students should start screaming at the MTA for being ******bags, rather than run whining to the administrators who are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place.</p>
<p>I understand your sentiments, I just don’t see the big deal about urbanizing the campus a little bit. It’s more than possible to have urban and suburban features live in harmony. I mean, how would closing off campus drive to any and all transit make the school less divided along it? I guess I’d just like to see what the school plans on doing with that space, which is about two cars wide.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t really know why it should look any different than the space between other buildings in parts of campus without roads. Trees, grass, sidewalk, sometimes some nice brick…ya know. I sort of imagined they were tearing up the road, not just leaving it there. </p>
<p>But yeah, it does depenend heavily on what they want that space to look like. A small train with no other traffic beside some bus routes is probably more attractive than just taking campus drive and throwing concrete over it haha.</p>
<p>If they really want to convince everyone they’re right, they should probably draw up some plans or something since currently the MTA’s drawing of the train down Campus Drive looks fabulous compared to what it is now. If there are really “bigger things in store” university administrators might want to talk about what they are -_-. But I guess the campus has other more pressing problems…</p>
<p>I feel like they’re totally winging it. Redivert traffic to Regent’s drive? That passageway is already horribly congested (and the poor engineering students, who already have to deal with the ugly part of campus, are shafted again). If they’re going to make dramatic changes to the campus they should have a better plan than “force students to fly into the university and land on rooftops”. Which is basically what it seems like…oh well…let’s see what happens…</p>