terrapinsanity.com

The long-time campus practice of assuming a compliant supine position in response to any state political need has never served us well, and only invites more sexploitation by officials who direct UM to expend resources in support of important state projects (by which they mean the officials’ own political priorities.)

Then came the Purple Line.

State planners want to drive a dagger through the heart of campus, splitting it in two. Have you seen the plans to run a Metro line through campus? Here, let’s remind you. The engineer’s rosy artwork shows true peaceful co-existence between students and trains. Check out the proposed route.

Any engineer who plans on cozy day-to-day interaction between campus pedestrians and trains has either never tried to drive across this campus or is simply delivering made-as-instructed solutions for political masters. There is no other place in the metro system that co-mingles foot, bike and train traffic like this – it is all controlled access, which is exactly how it will have to be implemented in College Park. It is not a trolley! We will get two campuses out of the deal – University of Maryland at North Side and University of Maryland at South Side.

Go ahead. Visualize graduations at Reckord Armory, as families must time their post-commencement conversations and photos to work around the metro schedule with trains running 40 yards away. Let’s serve as a nature preserve for outsiders to drive through every 10 minutes and gawk at the natural flora and fauna of campus. Be sure to charge parents top dollar for their kids to live in St Mary’s Hall, and feel proud that this real estate will be the closest housing to any metro stop in the system – every Dad is sure to feel happy to know his daughter is highly accessible to everyone in the DC-metro area.

And never mind noise, impact on laboratories, dividing our sense of community (at a time when more than ever we need one-ness) and crime. Yes, crime. Long-timers in the region know that no metro station has ever gone in without a direct skyrocket in crime. Metro is a teleportation device. Today when you drive onto campus late at night you will get screened by security. (Good!) Metro will by-pass this by the trainload. And for what? Nobody asserts this will be good for campus – it will be to get the political cost down for officials to pander to neighboring communities.

And this returns us to our “supine” observation at top. Campus officials have proposed a closure of Campus Drive – in great part the Purple Line path through campus – starting next month and lasting the summer. The idea just got blasted by community feedback, as reported in the DB this morning. What’s the campus game?

Dangerous, that’s what, but there is no safe political route at this point. The test closure could let UM stake out a “we’re going pedestrian-only, you’re too late” position. That doesn’t matter to politicians who know that the day-to-day problems will come only years after they have moved on. Trains are a mixed use of space that would not be compatible nor safe but that will be someone else’s problem. What’s more useful in a closure is that this raises visibility within the community, alerting everyone to changes in our future. (Changes are in our future.) News of the Purple Line has yet to stir reaction around campus, so maybe once Campus Drive is closed it will get everyone’s attention. Then they can be invited to visualize what this space would be like without cars but with barriers and trains.

In the end, nothing but more questions. The closure could go poorly with lots of negative feedback – and there goes the campus argument that this must be protected as pedestrian-only space. The closure could go well, which could artificially buoy state planners’ arguments that their proposed bifurcation of campus would not by itself have much negative impact.

Even under the the best of circumstances, campus officials would need to fight hard in order to protect our sense of community and campus integrity. Years of being toadies to Annapolis will only make this fight harder.