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i don't know the particulars of this case, but i will say this -- if someone wanted to build a train line through the middle of one of the main green parts of my old campuses (The University of South Carolina-Aiken) -- holy cow, i'd have an absolute fit. the place is spectacularly beautiful -- there's no way in heck i'd allow anybody to run _any_ motorized thing through there - especially not something as ginormous as a light rail train. no way. i could make an exception for small, slow-moving, NEVs and utility golf cart-type vehicles, but that's it.

any object we're going to put in the vicinity of human beings should be human scale. having a huge light rail line flow through the middle of a campus green space doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but i'm happy to let the UMD folks decide for themselves what they want. hopefully they can at least make the train appear greenish.

also, a smaller streetcar would be preferable to a larger light rail-type traincar.

the other problem with building trains in America is that we're all cowards when it comes to highly-predictable fixed-route modes of transportation, so we build ugly concentration camp-like fences around our train lines, build pedestrian overpass gerbil runs over them, build mugging- and rape-enabling and inducing tunnels underneath them, etc. -- instead of trusting trains to slow the flip down when they're in the vicinity of humans, and maintaining priority for pedestrians and cyclists.

whatever they decide to do, generally speaking, any place should not be sacrificed to the Gods Of Rapid Transit without excellent reason/just cause.

today, the _one_ place we can hope to find some serenity in and near our cities is on the college campuses which are in and near our cities. to take away that simple reprieve from urban inhabitants would be to seriously diminish one of the final vestiges of human dignity in these environments.

by Peter Smith on May 8, 2010 3:44 pm • link • report