Purple and green

Not since Wawa closed have I seen a campus-wide debate as vigorous as the one over the Purple Line. Editorials, guest columns, community meetings and letters to the editor have been pouring in from all sides on a nearly daily basis. It's not surprising. The Purple Line will be one of the biggest transportation developments this state has seen since the Metro system was installed in the 1970s. If done right, it will reduce traffic on some of the worst stretches of the Beltway, spur economic growth in Prince George's County and help relieve the overall congestion that has hindered development on this side of Washington.

From the university's point of view, the Purple Line is even more important. The university prides itself on being close to Washington, a city that has an enormous amount to offer college students. But when most people first set foot in College Park, they begin to feel gypped. "I might as well have gone to school in Ithaca for all the 'big city' College Park has to offer," one disgruntled student told me. Driving into Washington from here ranges from inconvenient to suicidal. The Metro is a mile away on a dark road, and the bus system throughout the area is wholly inadequate. Getting to College Park from anywhere in Washington or its suburbs is difficult even for those with cars and nearly impossible for those who don't have one. There is no question that having the Purple Line will be a major step in connecting the campus to the city.

Sadly, the administration has not thrown its full weight behind the effort. I would hardly call university President Dan Mote's Oct. 25 column, "Support the right location," an emphatic endorsement. First of all, it is a bit overdue. Student leaders advocated for the administration's support last April. If the administration is really enthusiastic about the opportunities surrounding the Purple Line, it would not have taken six months to take a stand. Furthermore, once Mote took an official position, he threw another impediment into the mix by picking a fight over the station location on the campus. As the editorial staff pointed out last week, his objection makes no sense. Any visitor to San Diego or Denver knows that light rail and pedestrian traffic are not mutually exclusive, nor is light rail an aesthetic death knell. The point of the rail line is to make the campus more accessible. Right now, the Metro station is inconvenient and dangerous to walk to. Why would we make the same mistake again by placing the Purple Line stop somewhere as inaccessible and inconvenient as Byrd Stadium? Imagine the problem of pedestrian traffic passing through the parking lot behind Shipley Field. This tepid support is not so much a true endorsement as a last-ditch effort to stave off the inevitable.

Why hasn't the administration fully supported this effort from the beginning when it promises connectivity and growth to our hamstrung campus? A number of theories exist, ranging from simple lack of comprehension to personal agendas. However, Mote has a university to run, and I refuse to think that he simply does not comprehend the importance of easing the campus commute. So I put forth another theory explaining the administration's muted support for the Purple Line: the transportation budget.

More people riding light rail to the campus means less people buying parking permits and getting parking tickets. A simple calculation (in rough figures, 30,000 parking permits times $200 each, plus another $3 million in parking ticket revenue) shows that the university brings in close to $10 million each year just from parking permits and tickets alone. This is an important source of revenue for a university where funding is just as big a problem as congestion. We already face budget cuts and tuition hikes, so anything that jeopardizes this income is not welcome. Hence the administration's lukewarm support for the Purple Line.

With this in mind, I do not overly fault Mote. We all understand the importance of money. After all, the Purple Line will be useless if the university can't afford to keep the lights on. But as a student who commutes from Montgomery County every day, I remind him that the university should not force us to choose between adequate funding and adequate transportation. The university needs to be affordable and accessible. In the long term, the Purple Line will spur economic growth in an area crippled by traffic. The incentives of new housing options and thriving business will create more tax revenue. Good public transportation is at the heart of a burgeoning economy, so the light rail will actually help the university's budget situation, not hurt it. In the big picture, purple and green are actually complementary colors.

Danny Rogers is a graduate student in the chemical physics program. He can be reached at drogers2@umd.edu.