"I had this vision of ... linking those parking lots with a monorail system."
No, that wasn't a comment from last night's Town Council hearing on Carolina North. And it didn't come up at last week's traffic impact presentation or Neighborhoods for Responsible Growth forum.
It came from the late Chancellor Michael Hooker ... in 1997.
Hooker envisioned the main campus ringed by satellite parking lots served by a monorail. Critics derided it as Disneyland, but it was a bold idea. And judging from last night's Town Council hearing, we could use some bold ideas on Carolina North.
Plans for Carolina North call for 5,834 parking space by 2025, when 3 million square feet of the planned 8 million square feet are built. (By 2015, when 800,000 square fee are built, there would 1,743 parking spaces.)
That's not good enough for some council members. The parking figures assume 60 percent of people will drive to Carolina North and only 20 percent take the bus. "I'm concerned that we need to look at some additonal scenarios," Councilman Bill Strom said in staff writer Jesse DeConto's story today.
We're not hearing a lot from readers right now, and that may reflect a degree of Carolina North fatigue. But now is when it counts, with UNC and the town heading for a development agreement next month. As we've seen with East 54 and Greenbridge, many people don't pay attention until projects are on the ground, and by then it's too late to influence them.
Mayor Kevin Foy also wants a bolder vision. Even a "constrained" parking scenario -- less parking, more transit -- calls for only 20 percent fewer spaces. If that's the case, local roads will need to be widened or become bottlenecks.
What people need to do is "look at the vehicles on our roads and try to envision what it would actually be like with more than a minute and a half delay at every intersection," Foy says. "If you can get people to think about that."
So think about, and tell us what you think. Because that's the thing about vision, you need to have one to make sure you end up where you want.
Comments
A Matter of Trust
Tue, 05/12/2009 - 19:34 — ClaudiusI think one of the reasons you haven't heard more people speaking out against CN is that they feel that the University will do a better job of stewardship without too much meddling from town hall.
This newspaper seems to be encouraging the image of an 'us vs. them' battle between the townspeople and UNC. In reality, I believe the citizens of Chapel Hill have considerably more faith in the university's vision of the future than they do in the sometimes shortsighted posturing of the town's come-and-go political leaders.