University Gazette, May 8, 2002

Challenge: Shifting attitudes out of drive

Editor's note: This is the latest installment in a Gazette series of in-depth stories on the campus master plan. It examines the plan's impact on transportation and parking at Carolina.

Parking.

Perhaps no other word uttered at Carolina has more power to make emotions run hot and the blood to boil. And it's not hard to figure out the source of the friction -- and the heat.

Most people who work and study here have cars, and most people with cars think it's a reasonable expectation that being employed or enrolled here would entitle them to a parking spot, somewhere within easy reach of the buildings where they work or study.

And therein lies the rub: Nearly everybody wants something that fewer and fewer people will be able to have.

Driving the parking deficit deeper in the years ahead is the $1 billion construction boom already under way that will continue through the end of the decade. The new construction will offer modern accommodations for thousands more employees and students -- but for only a small fraction of their cars.

And for those who manage to get their hands on a parking permit, the price will come at a higher and higher premium.

But, Carolina administrators say, this is only one part of the picture. It's the part that gets the most attention, that riles tempers and sparks debate. And while that anger is understandable, it's the other part that employees and students should keep their eyes on, they say. The part with less-clogged streets and cleaner air. The part with tree-adorned green spaces instead of car-covered asphalt. The part with building styles that complement one another rather than clash. In other words, the part envisioned by the master plan.

The principles behind the process

The master plan looks out 50 years, but work already has begun in earnest to fill in the blueprint with bricks and mortar. Four new residence halls will open on south campus in the fall. Work on what's known as the "Arts Common" will get under way later this month with renovations to Memorial Hall. Ground will be broken on a new Science Complex in the spring of 2003.

These and dozens of other master plan projects will leave Carolina a better place, better equipped to serve students in classrooms and staff in offices, researchers in laboratories and patients in hospitals, says Jonathan Howes, chair of the master plan's Executive Steering Team.

"We really think we have a plan that will enable us to grow in a way that improves the campus environment, while at the same time meeting our programmatic needs," Howes said.

Just as important, Howes says, all of these new and improved facilities will come without sacrificing the qualities of Carolina that mean so much to so many. Walks along tree-shaded paths bordered by grass-covered open spaces. Buildings boasting architecture that meets the test of time. In fact, the master plan will build on these qualities, so abundant on north campus, by exporting them to south campus.

"It looks to the future but honors our past," Howes said.

And the master plan adheres to these principles because the campus community decided that's how Carolina's future should look. While the teams of faculty, staff, students, local citizens and leaders who helped consultants develop the plan may have debated where to put this building or that building, they all agreed on one thing -- fix what's wrong but keep what's right.

"In the master plan, one of the basic principles was the recognition that one of Carolina's greatest assets is the beauty of the historic north campus, and so we sought to recreate that on south campus," Howes said.

He said that planners came to understand "two forces" that would be important in redesigning south campus.

"One is that the space needs for our Health Affairs complex are expansive and qualitatively different from the academic uses on north campus," Howes said. "Second, by having more students living on south campus, we could remake it, using the historic north campus as our model."

But the master plan's principle of maintaining Carolina's beauty while making room for its growth will come at a cost. You can't do both and still have a parking space for every employee and student who wants one.

The campus development plan -- which covers the first decade of the master plan -- calls for new construction totaling 5.9 million square feet and increasing the amount of green space on south campus, both of which will require removing some 20 acres of surface parking lots.

The plan also calls for replacing these lost parking spaces with eight new parking decks. But while the decks will provide enough spaces to meet the growing demand from campus visitors and UNC Health Care patients, they will not meet the growth in demand from employees and students.

By the end of the decade, according to campus data, the net increases in parking spaces will be 1,361 for visitors; 435 for employees; 31 for student family housing; and two for commuting students. During the same time, the number of campus employees is projected to increase by 44 percent, and the number of UNC Health Care employees is expected to increase by 16 percent. The number of students living on campus is expected to increase by 27 percent, but they will lose 239 spaces for their use.

"The hard reality is that, unless driving habits change, the current shortage of parking on campus is going to worsen," said Nancy Suttenfield, vice chancellor for finance and administration.

Changing the culture

As the campus grows, and the availability of parking declines, University officials know that attitudes must change dramatically. To bring the ratio of parking spaces to users into balance by 2010, the number of people driving alone to work will have to drop to 60 percent. At the same time, the use of transit from home must increase to 14 percent and park-and-ride use to 11 percent.

A recent survey conducted by the Department of Public Safety found that 77 percent of employees drive to work alone while only 4 percent carpool; only 5 percent use local transit; and only 5 percent use park-and-ride lots.

Those numbers explain why the University has already committed itself to strategies that will start changing attitudes now. And with help from Chapel Hill Transit, University leaders are putting money where their mouths are.

Next year's transportation and parking budget includes $500,000 to help subsidize fare-free transit in Chapel Hill and Carrboro for a full year, and the University will kick in part of the $600,000 that will go to provide transit services to new park-and-ride lots and cover inflationary increases in transit.

Another $225,000 will go toward debt service for building a second park-and-ride lot at the Friday Center off N.C. 54 in Chapel Hill and expanding the resident student storage parking lot. And through a partnership with the Town of Chapel Hill a new park-and-ride lot also will open off Jones Ferry Road in Carrboro. The second Friday Center lot will have about 800 spaces, the Jones Ferry Road lot will have 500 spaces and the storage parking lot will have about 500 more spaces.

The two new park-and-ride lots, scheduled to open this fall, will bring Carolina's park-and-ride network up to eight lots with a total of about 2,525 parking spaces. Longer term, the University plans to pursue lots at several other sites, including one along the U.S. 15-501 corridor between Chapel Hill and Durham.

More park-and-ride lots and fare-free bus service aren't the only alternative transportation programs that Carolina hopes to provide employees and students in the years ahead. The master plan would accommodate some sort of regional transit line coming to campus, with the specifics to be determined by what ultimately emerges from the work of area planners and the Triangle Transit Authority (TTA). TTA is working on other current and planned service improvements as well.

"Carolina will definitely have a place at the table as regional transit solutions are discussed and planned," Suttenfield said.

Providing the tools

But having alternatives doesn't necessarily mean that people will use them, especially people used to jumping in a car to get wherever they're going. And so Carolina employees and students will have to put aside that car culture, at least when it comes to getting to where they work and where they study. In short, administrators say, a culture change is needed.

"If we want our campus to become more beautiful, environmentally friendly and safe for pedestrians, we will need to make greater use of alternative means to get to and from campus," Suttenfield said.

Changing the culture won't be easy. Administrators understand that nothing beats the convenience of driving your own car to campus and parking in a spot by your building. And because they understand this, administrators know that they must do more than provide alternatives -- they must also provide incentives to use them.

For people to want to use the transit system and park-and-ride lots, University officials know they must remove the reasons most employees choose not to use them now.

One objection -- money -- has already been removed thanks to the fare-free transit service that began in January and park-and-ride lots that have been offered free of charge since they were introduced in the fall of 1998.

Why does the University make people pay for parking lots on campus while park-and-ride users get to use the lots for free? Transit users get a free ride because the University wants to give employees a financial incentive to use the lots and the buses. Conversely, by charging higher parking permit fees, the University is creating a financial disincentive to keep paying for parking privileges.

"The University recognizes that incentives can be powerful means to convince those who use cars to get here to try an alternative," Suttenfield said.

Administrators also know that park-and-ride service needs to be reliable as well as financially attractive, with transit buses running often enough to meet people's schedules. They know people need to be able to get back to their cars quickly in the middle of the day in case of an emergency at home or their child's school. They know there are times when people need to park on campus to get to a morning kindergarten production or afternoon doctor's appointment.

And so administrators have worked with Chapel Hill Transit officials to increase the number of buses running back and forth between park-and-ride lots and campus. They've implemented an "Emergency Ride Back" program for park-and-ride users, in which a ride back to a lot is just a phone call away. They've developed a free program whereby employees can get a limited number of one-day permits so that they can park on campus when using a park-and-ride lot or riding the bus won't do.

"We've tried very hard to put together a menu of choices that removes barriers to use of transit options," Suttenfield said.

So Carolina is putting in place the tools needed to get people out of their cars and into a bus or some other alternative form of transportation. It's Debby Freed's job to make sure employees and students know about them -- and to convince people to use them.

"Carolina has over 15,000 employees, some of us live as close as a block away from campus and others commute from as far as Elon College and beyond," said Freed, Transportation Demand Management coordinator. "We all have one common destination -- campus -- and most of us are trying to get to campus within the same two-hour window in the morning, and leave within the same two-hour window in the evening. That makes for horrendous traffic congestion if everyone is in a single occupancy vehicle."

Fortunately, she said, that doesn't have to be the case.

"Chapel Hill Transit has been very responsive to commuters needs and is interested in helping to make park-and-ride and transit work for people commuting to work as well as classes," she said. "Triangle Transit Authority has improved its headways into Chapel Hill and is taking an active part in helping the Carolina community form carpools and vanpools, for those who prefer those options to transit."

Freed began working here last summer. Since then she's surveyed employees and students to learn how they get to campus and what it would take to get them to use alternatives. She's helped develop the Commuter Alternatives Program (CAP), which gives people incentives to make the switch (see www.unc. edu/news/gaz/archives/02mar27/file.2.html for details). She's appeared at campus forums and before employee groups to promote the benefits of alternative transportation programs. She writes a Gazette column called "Moving Forward" that lets employees know how those programs could work for them.

"Increased parking permit prices and decreased parking availability, traffic congestion, as well as a commitment to the environment and air quality concerns are all reasons the Carolina community has been giving for looking for alternatives to driving alone to campus," she said.

And now with CAP rewarding people for using everything short of a single occupancy vehicle to get to campus, there's even more incentive to use alternatives.

"I'm very excited about the start of this program," Freed said. "People are pre-registering for it now, as they make the choice between getting a parking permit or registering for CAP.

"The response has been extremely positive. I am committed to making this program work for employees and would be very interested in speaking to departments and employee groups about it."

Freed knows her job won't be easy. But she also knows that the message she preaches is the message embraced by the Carolina community.

"The vision for Carolina's future as drawn by the master plan foresees a campus dedicated to excellence in education in a setting of timeless elegance, equally embracing the history of the University as well as its future," she said. "No one in the Carolina community believes that this vision includes traffic-clogged streets and overcrowded parking lots.

"Traffic and parking congestion will not disappear without a unified response to the problem. The Carolina community is ready to take on this challenge and become part of the solution. I'm excited by the prospect and proud to be a part of it."
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