Dan Reed, left, a university alumnnus and a former Diamondback columnist, attends the forum yesterday. He said he is concerned about the closing of Campus Drive and believes that more planning is needed for the project.

About 50 students arrived angry and left angry from yesterday’s Student Government Association-sponsored public forum on Campus Drive, which left many unsatisfied with officials’ defense of a plan to close that road to traffic this summer.

The open forum quickly turned into a heated bash-fest, as the attendees bombarded Department of Transportation Services Director David Allen, Associate Vice President for Facilities Management Frank Brewer and University Police Maj. Larry Volz with impassioned questions about the plan, its safety issues and what burden blocking off the campus’s main road would place on those with disabilities.

Students at the forum, which was held in Stamp Student Union’s Margaret Brent Room, said they worry rerouting buses would simply relegate traffic problems to the already-overcrowded and pedestrian-infested Regents Drive hub — the central location where all buses would stop under the new plan.

Officials have said the university will run a pilot program from June 19 to Aug. 13 to experiment with restricting traffic on Campus Drive to make the area around the student union more pedestrian-oriented, a goal laid out in the Facilities Master Plan. Only the two Campus Connector Shuttle-UM buses, emergency vehicles and cars headed for the University Health Center would be permitted to navigate Campus Drive from the “M” traffic circle to the Preinkert Drive intersection across from Cole Field House.

The North and South Campus Connector buses would loop every 30 minutes. In the evenings, two other bus lines would replace the Campus Connectors and run on Campus Drive, Allen said.

The Facilities Master Plan Steering Committee would collect data from the summer pilot program to determine the effects of implementing it permanently, Brewer said. The committee must submit a final report of its findings in September and decide by spring 2011 whether to keep the new system. Brewer and Allen, the forum’s leaders, said the pilot is in line with the Facilities Master Plan and is just a practice run.

“We’re trying to sort of crawl before we walk,” said Brewer, who chairs the committee. “It’s a relatively slow traffic period, so summer seemed like the ideal time to do that.”

The committee will also evaluate how the change would impact the construction of the Purple Line on Campus Drive, the alignment option favored by students, city residents and state officials. Administrators have repeatedly endorsed the more expensive Preinkert Drive alignment because they say it won’t have a negative impact on laboratory work sensitive to electromagnetic interference. Some students claimed closing Campus Drive to traffic would effectively eliminate the choice.

Jesse Yurow, a junior environmental science and policy major, said the program doesn’t fit in with two key passages in the plan: “maximize use of alternatives to driving to campus” and “improve the campus’s integration into the regional transit system network.

Brewer’s response?

“OK,” he said.

And although students agreed reducing private automotive traffic on Campus Drive is a worthy goal, many said limiting public transit access to the heart of the campus would be detrimental to bus riders and possibly even the student union if less people found it convenient or possible to attend events held there.

Allen attempted to address these concerns, but his reply about increasing bus hubs on peripheral roads drew dismissive mumbles from audience members.

Another student wanted to know if the inconvenient routes would deter people from using public transit, effectively counteracting the ultimate objective.

“I think it could, maybe, yes,” Allen answered after a pause.

Attendees also voiced concerns about the plan’s impact on injured or disabled students, who could be especially inconvenienced by the indirect routes. For students who can’t walk up the Campus Drive hill, the Campus Connector buses would be their only means of reaching the student union or other buildings along the road. Several students said that just won’t cut it.

The plan would relocate 21 handicapped parking spaces along Campus Drive to areas further away, though Allen said “the next possible closest space[s]” were chosen.

Although some students said they understood why officials want to test a traffic reduction program, even if they disagreed with the specifics, others criticized the decision to run the pilot program at all.

“You keep saying we need to test this [plan],” freshman finance major Elizabeth Moran said. “But we don’t generally test bad ideas.”

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