UNC on the offensive

Again I have to ask, "Why should a guiding principle for CN be a reduction in reliance on single occupant vehicles?" What is the rationale? What does this mean in terms of travel on CN, and to and from CN? Inquiring minds want to know.

I believe that the vast majority of people who believe this do so in most part because they believe that single occupant vehicles are evil environmentally as compared to transit. This is not the case. Single occupant motor vehicles even in their current poor economy state use no more fuel than transit in its current state. I'm willing to bet that Jack Evans, to single out the new CN leader, has no clue about this and is simply using "common sense" and parroting political correctness. But UNC planners who monitor OP ought to know better by now.

What about less conventional vehicles such as low power, low speed electric vehicles? These are far more economical than transit can ever be.

Wayne, champion of personal mobility.

I believe one of the objectives (or "guiding principles," which sounds much less to the point, and potentially more subject to waffling, but so be it) of CN should be words to the effect that:

"One objective of the new campus will be to ensure, to the maximum extent possible, that there will be no increase in traffic in the area."

This can be done by planning the thing out correctly, by having the right types of living areas planned and constructed at the right times.

One can add more on environmental sustainability matters (e.g. stormwater management, and other items that stem from previous mention of the new EPA building at RTP; and elsewhere).

Carolina North, if approached right will attract the best talent and ideas to UNC. If done wrong, it will repel that talent. There's nothing worse than a traffic jam, or lot's of code orange and code red ozone days, to make interviewees decide to live elsewhere.

WillR, thanks. As you may have gathered from some of my recent posts, I'm big on setting objectives by concensus on such things as Carolina North. If this is not done, it is going to be a long, hard slog and they'll come up with something that not everybody will support, and which therefore may turn out to be unworkable.

I've gone before the Town Council (2 years ago) and posted here, and tried also to inform some folks at UNC, that there are processes for helping make concensus happen here, such as via what is called Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA).

The conflict resolution approach, which I've read may be taking place, is OK, but it is only as good as the input from nonstakeholder professionals that goes into it (if it does at all). The kinds of input needed here include the right kinds of technical input on traffic, land-use planning, environmental sustainability, what other communities have done in similar circumstances, air pollution, and so forth. Two sides can go back and forth all they want, acknowledging each others' points of view, but much of what they can agree upon can only be elicited through obtaining the right kinds of input at the right stages. This is the kind of process that is needed here. Many points of view on Carolina North, in my opinion, appear in large measure to be only nascent ones, and that is one reason that there is difference of opinion on how to proceed.

Wayne, pardon me a few nit picking comments on the enviromental value of busses. On average your assesment might be right. On average things aren't average. When I take the day "D" bus out to Lowes or Boarders there's at best two or three other riders; probably a waste of fuel. When I take the "NS" bus home from work it's normaly standing room only. Sometimes it's full up and the driver won't let more passengers on at Columbia and Rosemary north bound. That's a huge energy savings over single occupanct cars. I think a part of this problem is political. Neighborhoods with low ridership demand service they never use.

I suspect CN can, maybe will, be an example of fuel savings. Where I work on campus, only a small fraction of the staff can get a parking pass and those passes are priced dear. People ride the bus. Out at Boarders parking is ample and free. People drive. I think in this case it's safe to infer causality from correlation. If CN limits parking spaces it can induce bus ridership by it's staff; or bikes; or walking; hot air balloons; what ever.

Another enviomental issue that your model forgets is surface water run off. Parts of the Horace Williams tract lay in the Bolin creek flood plain; others in the Booker creek flood plain. Both stream's are prone to flooding. I don't drink the water from either one. Additional pavement will cause additional degradation of water quality and additional frequencey and severity of flooding. To some extent the very nature of CN makes this problem unavoidable. There are mitigation efforts that can be made. Still, Jordan Lake kinda resembles a cess pool and reducing parking a CN sounds like a good enviomental step to me. There's no way to reduce parking and have a large staff with out some kind of mass transit.

Clark,

I have always said transit makes sense in limited applications.

Your assertion that "on average is not average" is silly. We have a transit system. That system as a whole is not environmentally good. Portions of it are, but those portions exist with other segments that will always drag it down.

Again, I think a design that results in growth, ie a research campus, is something that should be opposed. My opinion is that CN should become subsidized housing for existing UNC and town worker staff that is powered by a green powerplant. Transit can then be run through it as it does through other neighborhoods in the towns. Society ought to take measures to have people live closer to where they work. Leading insitutions ought to lead the way on this.

IF it is designed as a campus, then travel to campus should be minimized, but there will still be transit. However, travel on campus need not be as wastefull as having the U and RU routes that basically displace walking. Transit to the campus is not feasible except on a pathetic scale due to disperson of the population.

Parking need not create a lot of impermeable surface: tall parking decks.

Things can always be designed miserable enough, or get miserable enough through growth, to make transit seem attractive by comparison to personal transportation. That is not something I aspire to.

Wayne

On CN:

Wayne P. makes some interesting observations, which in part lead to the question: what are the alternatives to Carolina North that would meet some, or all, of UNC's objectives for it? One alternative is to build higher, which is done at schools such as the U. of Texas at Austin.

Also, as has been pointed out, UNC is already part of the Research Triangle, with its Research Triangle Park. RTP is due for a retrofit, which UNC, NC State, and Duke could get together on. There's lot's of space out at RTP, if the transportation issue could be addressed (e.g. high speed monorail between UNC and RTP); that could well take care of research space needs perceived by UNC.

I'm studying Evans' recent information, kindly provided at WillR's website. After a cursory examination, I still believe that the objectives of Carolina North have yet to be fully explored through having the right kinds of technical input (during a collaborative process), that input including facilitating exploration of various alternatives such as the two noted above. One can't make the best decision(s) among alternatives without such a process that includes the right kinds of technical input at the right stages.

On buses:

Can't routes with low ridership numbers be served by smaller vehicles, such as vans. When ridership is shown to increase, then move to larger vans, then buses, etc.

Barnes,

You also have to figure in the cost over time. Smaller buses aren't built as solidly and thus have about half the lifespan of the larger units (they also have weaker suspension systems and thus are lest comfortable for the riders). In addition, a larger bus can be used on a less-busy route (although admittedly this is less efficient) while a smaller bus cannot be moved to a busier route. Thus there is much less flexibility in moving equipment around as the demand changes, either long- or short-term. The staff at CHT look at these things on a continuing basis - they have a vested interest in getting the most cost savings out of their equipment, both on a long- and short-term basis.

I won't disagree with Wayne that the amount of gas
used to move people in buses about equals that of the
people using their individual cars, one person per car.
But to say therefore that "Mass Transit is not green", ignores
other aspects of the issue.
In rough numbers, every day about
33K people commute to UNC campus, where there are about
14K parking spaces available for commuters. What the
buses do, gasoline notwithstanding, is to allow the people who don't have a parking sticker to get there. Would it be more green to pave McCorkle and Polk places, and every other square inch of campus,
so that each comuter could have his individual
parking space?

This is not just my opinion. A few years ago, Vice Chancellor
Nancy Suttenfield, stating that without the bus system, UNC
simply could not operate, backed up her opinion by
starting to make substantial contributions, substantial as in several million per year, to CH Transit.

A few years before that, the UNC students voted to
charge themselves about nine dollars per student
per semester to pass to the bus system. While this
amount, totalling about 500K per year, forms
only a small portion (5 pct?) of the bus system operating budget, it indicates that there is great support from the
students for the town buses.

Could UNC commuting be done with greener vehicles, such
as neighborhood electric vehicles? Sure, but there are
not today, in the marketplace, such vehicles available in
mass quantities. I have an electric Chevy S-10, which I
converted from gasoline-powered in 2000. I didn't commute
to campus in it, because I just rode my bike, which was
more fun, enabled even easier parking.

As a member of the Triangle Electric Auto Association, we
tried unsuccessfully to lobby UNC to provide priority parking,
including a plug-in for EVs. With the severe parking
limits on the main campus (which I hope will continue at
CN), people will spend money for special cars if the
result is a close-in parking space, I believe. As a consequence, one of the services that CN should
provide is EV priority parking, with a contract with one
of the EV manufacturers, such as GEM-Benz, not for UNC
to provide the cars (Umstead Act, etc), but simply to
educate people that such cars do exist for purchase.

The rationale for a prominent role for bus and rail transit at Carolina North is that emphasizing transit provides the best opportunity to realize the goals of both town and University stakeholders, rather than realizing the University's goals at the expense of the towns, or vice versa.

Carolina North has four primary design parameters that will ultimately determine the balance or imbalance of UNC's goals for research/academics and the towns' goals for quality of life.

They are:

1. BUILDING PROGRAM.
2. PARKING.
3. HOUSING.
4. NON-AUTOMOBILE ACCESS.

On parameter 1, as far as I can tell, UNC is very strongly committed to their full program and my observations of the LAC suggest that the towns are structuring discussions around managing the impacts of the full program, and not some partial implementation. Unless I'm missing some subtext to the town/gown dialogue, I don't think this parameter is going to be adjusted.

On parameter 2, the local collective reaction to 17,000 - 20,000 parking spaces in the ASG plans demonstrates that the incredible traffic CN could generate is probably perceived as the #1 threat to local quality of life from CN's development.

On parameter 3, we know that employees are living further and further from the UNC campus. The fastest growing distance segment of UNC commuters is those who live more than 20 miles from campus. 48 percent of existing employees live over 10 miles away. Housing takes time to build. The take-home point here is that even if substantial numbers of housing units are built at CN, 10-20 years into 50 years of development, we can expect CN employee dispersal patterns to be relatively similar to today's UNC worker pattern. Which leads to…

Parameter 4. Those distant 48% of hinterland-dwellers are not walking or biking to campus. In our society, personal mobility stems from personal vehicle ownership. Virtually none of the far-flung workers are going to spend their own money on presently non-existent mass market personal electric vehicles when they need personal fossil-fueled vehicles for most other activities in their lives because their residential communities are designed around the car. This doesn't even address the challenges inherent with the distance range of existing battery technology.

Within Chapel Hill/Carrboro, walking to CN will be challenging to many due to distance and topography, at least until more housing is built near CN, and bicycling to CN is difficult and unpleasant for many due to topography and weather.

Local transit can facilitate both local trips from the towns to CN and between the campuses. Long-haul transit by rail and bus, using hinterland park-and-ride lots in Chatham, Alamance, Durham counties and other far-flung locations, heading of the congestion effects and pollution of thousands of incoming cars—many miles away from Chapel Hill/Carrboro.

Simply put, if you want to bring in thousands of workers to Carolina North without bringing heavy negative externalities on the towns, then transit is your first and fastest option to balance the desires of UNC to build their program with the desires of the town to preserve quality of life. Housing is a secondary strategy that takes longer to build and years to filter through the market. Buses can be deployed quickly. Under a good plan and funding arrangement, trains from Burlington into CN and Carrboro could be running in as little as 4-8 years, perhaps operated and maintained by Norfolk Southern Railway.

Any serious attempt to address transportation to Carolina North will, at minimum, lay out a vision that acknowledges the tradeoffs of these 4 parameters and suggests reality-based actions the towns and UNC can take.

It sounds nice to say, but there is no "balance" between the University's full build program and preserving the quality of life. The former overwhelms the latter. On the other hand, if UNC did an about face and decided to restrict itself to the existing campus and aggressively built housing on Horace Williams for existing employees who currently live in the hinterlands, then we'd have something.

I realize my vision is seen as fanciful. Perhaps it is. But my big picture envisions a real attempt at stabilizing carbon emissions. UNC's big picture is growth.

Let me also be clear that I like UNC, so my bashing of their plan is tough love.

Joe,

My bet is that those commuting numbers are misleading, counting anybody who lives off campus, no matter how close, as a commuter, including students. Also, the students who voted with their pocketbooks caused the Law of Unintended Consequences to result in less walking and bicycling, displaced by free bus trips.

Wayne

Is employee housing really such a great idea for HW? Since it's state property, there are only two models I can see: rentals or a restricted ownership model like the housing trust (or a combination of the two).

If UNC builds the housing and rents it out, similar to the way it handles student housing, there would need to be an associated increase in maintenance resources (staff, tools, office space, vehicles) as well as administrative staff. Affordability for employees, but increased infrastructure costs for the university (aka state residents, aka you and me). How would that infrastructure growth compete with other campus resource needs and/or tuition costs? Between the additional principal and interest from the construction, the additional staffing resources, and then additional load on university utilities, I have serious reservations about this option in terms of long-term benefit-cost to the community and the university.

If UNC sells the structures but maintains covenants to ensure university employee ownership/affordability upon sale, then employees lose the wealth creation opportunities of private housing. Would these be starter homes for new faculty? Long-term residences for our working class staff? If so, what are the personal financial tradeoffs to living in property that will not appreciate at the same rate as other property? This could be a significant financial hit if they do not plan to spend their entire career with the university.

There was an employee survey done sometimes around 2001 to monitor interest in university housing but I don't remember ever seeing the results. I have to wonder how many of the truly permanent employees, as opposed to those who are here for a limited time while a spouse is in school, are really interested in university housing. Are the blue-collar staff workers willing to live in Chapel Hill rather than Alamance County? If you build it, will they come?

What impact does the university entrance into the housing market have on rental costs and affordability in the larger community? I've questioned the expansion of the land trust for this same reason--is it really building long term affordable housing or is it putting upward pressure on small homes that are not in its inventory? I don't know the answer to these questions, but I would prefer to give this issue of university housing more thought before rushing into advocacy.

Terri,

I think you ask good questions. I'm not able to answer them since it is not my area of expertise.

However, as far as increased costs for housing, the building of a campus incurs increased costs. Also a main reason to have employees live close is to reduce the public's transportation costs to accommodate them.

Wayne

Terri,

under the Village Project plan, we envisioned something other than the structures of ownership you have mentioned. Instead of fee simple ownership, maybe it is "fee complex"- where UNC condominium-izes(?) units so that people can experience the wealth-building effect of homeownership, and not have to give it up to live there. (Indeed, this would be a big strike against housing at Carolina North if it was renting-only)

Buildings that were exclusively residential would have residents with common interest stakes in the structure, and UNC with interests in the land, for example.

I'm not a real estate lawyer, so these are just speculative guesses at how to do it, but I think a new finance model would be needed.

I also don't think that all the units at CN would need to be OCHLT-style affordable ones. Certainly a mix, similar in style (but not necessarily in ratio) to the Greenbridge project, might make sense.

Patrick,

When we're talking about state property, I'd be surprised if there could be outright ownership. I'm not a lawyer either, but I do work for the state and just to turn a computer over to surplus requires extra effort. So I agree with you that a different finance model will be required. I'm sure UNC has thought about this since they are planning the development off Homestead Rd. Should be interesting to see how this all plays out.