Committee Analyzes Master Plan Parking

Students, faculty and staff on the committee said the parking situation for the next 50 years will revolve around the implementation of the Master Plan, a blueprint for future campus growth, and the passage of the $3.1 billion higher education bond.

"They're intertwined, but they are sort of separated," said Anna Wu, an architect for the Master Plan. "The implementation of the Master Plan is being jump-started by the bond."

Wu said the overall plan is to eliminate most of the surface parking lots on campus and move toward constructing up to 11 new parking decks, some of which will be underground.

Four decks are slated to be completed within five to seven years. "They're looking at about 20 acres of surface parking lots. Ten of those would be converted into building sites, and 10 would be converted into open spaces."

In the short term, these changes will result in a slight loss of parking spaces.

But when combined with the increase in enrollment planned for the next few years, the change in parking will be significant.

"The current ratio for parking will not be maintained," Wu said. "Regionally, we can't bring all that traffic into campus - the roads can't handle it."

The committee hopes to solve the parking crunch by encouraging more students to live on campus.

The Master Plan includes the construction of new residence halls and new family housing, beginning with four new residence halls on South Campus.

Committee members also want more students and faculty to use park-and-ride lots and the Chapel Hill Transit Authority service. "At the end of this Master Plan build-out, we might literally have as many people parking off-campus as park on campus now," said Carolyn Elfland, associate vice chancellor for auxiliary services.

Dorothy Verkerk, an assistant art history professor, said she believes the problem lies with people thinking they have no alternative to driving. "I think we need to get a lot more people to think, `I need to jump on the next bus in 10 minutes,'" Verkerk said.

For the next year, Elfland said the loss in parking spaces will be minimal. "The crunch is not next year - it is really the year after."

Several members pointed out numerous other problems in the Master Plan that have yet to be resolved. The specific sites for more park-and-ride lots have not been identified, and the University will reach Chapel Hill density limits in about one year.

Committee members said they plan to present these issues to the Board of Trustees next semester.

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.