terrapinsanity.com

One of President Loh’s earliest moves upon arrival here was reversing course on the Purple Line, a proposed east-west transit priority of politicians eager to put even more tax dollars into motion.

The Purple Line’s impact to campus will be terrible – cutting it in half what is today described as the “campus core”, increasing risk with Metro’s first-ever at-grade crossing in a pedestrian mall, and embedding another “crime conduit” (as some long-timers call them after they appeared in their neighborhoods years ago) right in our midst. Campus leaders at first opposed it (at least in the milquetoast way academics do these things), until Loh inexplicably (except in terms of “politics”) threw UM support behind the Purple Line. Since then, some respected campus figures who had spoken against the Purple Line have been mute, evidence that Main Admin continues to rule top down and with an iron fist.

Loh should have been careful what he signed up for in flipping policy, since today the very first feathered friend of a very large flock came home to roost. The Post reports state planners are holding back details of preliminary planning so as to not trigger stronger opposition from people affected by the Purple Line. Over three hundred homes and businesses will be directly razed to make way for the line (details still said to be changing “daily”.) That doesn’t count impact to what will surely be thousands of properties and businesses that are immediately adjacent to the land which the state will take at gunpoint.

Loh’s message to our neighbors in the surrounding community is effectively “We like you so much we think you should be paved!”