You Shouldn’t Have To Preach To the Choir

Universities often lead the way towards balanced transportation.  Many students rely on it, and it mirrors societies need to have much more on energy-efficient rail. After all, the academic community has—or should have—a clearer understanding of the environmentally-based need for lifestyle change than the rest of us. Plus, they have a huge constituency of students who are transit-dependent.

But University of Maryland and Princeton University are raising eyebrows regarding, respectively, UMD position on a long-planned light rail line across the campus, and plans to relocate the Princeton train station in a way that would make public transportation far less attractive.

The long-proposed Purple Line would be an east-west transit corridor in the northern inner-beltway suburbs of Washington, D.C.  Its needed now more than ever with rising gas costs and increased congesion in the Capital Region.  As planned, the line will run right through the middle of the campus of the University of Maryland-College Park.  This main campus of the University of Maryland system has well over 30,000 students, so it would seem that the Purple Line is a natural match.

UMD officials seem lukewarm at best. Washington Examiner recently quoted UMD spokesman Millree Williams, “We have maintained that bringing the Purple Line to campus would be a great opportunity, but bringing it [ground-level] and running through the center of campus would be very disruptive.” Translation: put it underground or somewhere else. The article also quotes the Maryland Transit Administration’s Purple Line project manager, Michael Madden: “We feel that it’s going to be much more cost-effective if it’s at [ground level].”  Translation: underground is prohibitively expensive.  After the university’s interim vice president of administrative affairs wrote to MTA in March, several students, including student government president Andrew Friedson wrote to UMD-College Park President Dan Mote, saying “we urge your administration to become an outright champion of the project.” And Prince George’s County Council Member Eric Olson wrote, “I believe that the university’s fears are unfounded and that major universities and major cities including Salt Lake City and Portland and many others have light rail running above ground.  And it’s very safe and integrates well with pedestrians.”  The Examiner article (strangely, not available on-line), concluded, “Williams said [UMD President] Mote plans to meet with MTA in the next few weeks. ‘Then we will [evaluate] where we are after that.’”

In New Jersey, Princeton University has wanted to move the downtown station for New Jersey Transit’s Princeton-Princeton Junction shuttle train (known affectionately as “The Dinky”) from its convenient location blocks from campus to a location almost a mile away.  The University wants the land for expansion—just as University growth forced the line to be cut back almost a half mile in 1920.

As in College Park, students are rallying around The Dinky.  It’s the administration and leadership whose views need to change.

—Ross Capon