The University Senate is softening its opposition to the proposed Campus Drive alignment of the Purple Line as a new design for the transitway continues to win support.

However, some senators said at yesterday’s senate meeting they would still rather see the line follow Preinkert and Chapel Drives, and others continued to demand the line be built underground.

But the opposition was softer than it was last year, when senators, after hearing a presentation from Vice President for Administrative Affairs Doug Duncan, railed against the Campus Drive alignment, which the Maryland Transit Administration has long supported. One senator said at the time the alignment was an “invitation to disaster.”

However, a new “plaza” concept for the redesign of Campus Drive was unveiled by the MTA earlier this year and presented tothe senate yesterday by MTA consultant Joel Oppenheimer. It has made some senators more willing to accept the Campus Drive alignment. The administration has also been more receptive to the new design.

“I would lean a little towards the Preinkert-Chapel alignment because I think it maintains the unity of the center of campus,” senate Chairman Kenneth Holum said. “But that’s no longer a position I hold very strongly.”

Holum said the MTA had been responsive to senators’ concerns about aesthetics and safety and offered a more palatable design.

People had been worrying about “barbed wire or something horrible like that keeping pedestrians off the rail,” senate Chairwoman-elect Elise Miller-Hooks said. Others had also previously expressed concern that a train coming through the center of the campus could injure careless pedestrians.

But with more landscaping and open space and with the promise that light rail trains would run no faster than buses do on Campus Drive today, many were more accepting of the idea.

The MTA prefers the Campus Drive setup because it is a more central location in the campus, has an existing roadway with few curves and has fewer narrow spaces than the Preinkert-Chapel alternative, Oppenheimer said.

But the MTA has also seemed more open to considering Preinkert Drive as a workable route for the Purple Line than it had been to previous university suggestions that it look at a tunnel underneath the campus and a North Campus route following Stadium Drive.

MTA officials estimate the two routes would cost about the same amount of money and would take about as much time to get across the campus. The Preinkert route would put the rail in the relatively narrow space between LeFrak Hall and the South Campus Dining Hall and encroach into the “viewshed” of the Memorial Chapel, however.

Another concern has been the effect of electromagnetic interference and vibration on scientific experiments. The university hired consultants to conduct a study on this issue, which will be released Monday.

The Campus Drive alignment would have the Purple Line enter the campus at University of Maryland University College, go through Lot 1, follow Campus Drive to the M traffic circle, skirt the engineering field, cross Route 1 near Rossborough Lane and pass through the upcoming East Campus development to the College Park Metro Station.

The Preinkert-Chapel Drive alignment would avoid Lot 1, instead following Preinkert Drive to the South Campus Dining Hall, then running through the parking lot in front of the Shoemaker Building, following Chapel Drive and going through the chapel field to cross Route 1 at Rossborough.

The MTA hopes to begin building the 16-mile light rail or bus rapid transit line connecting Bethesda and New Carrollton as early as 2012 in time to be open in 2015.

holtdbk@gmail.com