Begin forwarded message:
Evansdale Changes Could Affect Arboretum
Perhaps you’ve heard about WVU’s Evansdale campus master plan, a comprehensive blueprint for an ambitious, much-needed makeover that is expected to include $160 million in new buildings as well as major changes in landscaping, parking, and vehicular and pedestrian traffic patterns. WVU officials presented preliminary drawings and discussed the plan at two public forums last October 24. The plan’s goals, which include creating a more collegial atmosphere for the campus, vastly improving facilities for research and teaching, and generally upgrading the Evansdale experience for students and faculty, are laudable.
However, a few attendees at the forums, myself included, expressed concerns about a tiny roadway that showed up on one bird’s-eye view. As drawn, this roadway would pass through the highest part of the Arboretum, running from the Coliseum parking lot to the intersection of Evansdale Drive and Monongahela Boulevard, at the location of the current Arboretum parking lot. The drawing showed the proposed roadway tucked in above all Arboretum trails.
I found this drawing to be disturbing and disingenuous. Even a casual visit to the site would reveal that the proposed roadway would need to dip at least a bit farther into the Arboretum, requiring massive filling to address topographic challenges, forcing the relocation of some trail sections, wiping out many planted trees and shrubs of merit, eliminating most of the Arboretum parking lot, and degrading the experience of visitors to the nearby lawn and specimen tree area. This area is the most public and heavily visited part of the Arboretum, useful for teaching, popular with casual visitors, and the site of an occasional wedding.
Subsequent meetings with University personnel have led me to a partial understanding of the thinking behind the roadway proposal, but I remain stunned that an administration that is steadfast in its efforts to defend the Arboretum against a different proposed roadway can simultaneously contemplate building its own roadway through part of the Arboretum.
One goal of the master plan is to improve the safety of pedestrians crossing Monongahela Boulevard. Currently, students and others routinely jaywalk to get between the free parking lot at the Coliseum and the main part of the Evansdale campus. The idea is to change the light by the Arboretum parking lot to stop traffic on the Boulevard, which now has perpetual through traffic in the eastbound right-hand lane, so pedestrians could use a new crosswalk there. (Such a change should also equalize utilization of the eastbound Boulevard lanes – currently, nearly all traffic tries to squeeze into the right-hand through lane.)
I agree wholeheartedly with the goal of improving pedestrian safety, and I think the crosswalk/traffic signal proposal may well have merit. A solid barrier protecting pedestrians along the Arboretum side of the Boulevard could also serve as a partial road noise barrier for the Arboretum.
Then, however, the thinking evidently took the turn that could be damaging to the Arboretum. If we stop traffic at the light, why not make that a four-way intersection? Then, why not build a roadway through a little bit of the Arboretum, a roadway to connect the intersection at the Arboretum to the Coliseum parking lot? This could take some of the pressure off the intersection at the Coliseum traffic light.
Ideas for possible one-lane or two-lane roadways are currently being studied, as are replacement parking somewhere designated for Arboretum visitors and the possible addition of new arboretum land elsewhere in Morgantown.
Ironically, the traffic flow situation of most evident concern at last week’s meeting of University personnel might not be helped by the proposed roadway. I refer to what happens after men’s basketball home games. Currently, there is at those times continuous flow out of the eastern end of the Coliseum lot, proceeding eastbound down the Boulevard. Unless I’m missing something here, the proposed roadway would merely shift this flow through the Arboretum on its way to the Boulevard. The rate at which cars leave the Coliseum lot would not increase at all.
My boss, Department of Biology Chair Dr. Richard Thomas, has offered to collect letters from persons who wish to express an opinion on the idea of a new roadway through the top of the Arboretum. Please send any such letters to:
Dr. Richard Thomas
Chair, WVU Department of Biology
PO Box 6057
Morgantown, WV 26506-6057
Thank you for considering this, and please remember, everyone involved at WVU wants only to do what is best for the University. It’s just that different persons have different ideas about what that means.
Jon Weems
Arboretum Specialist
WVU Department of Biology
Morgantown, WV 26506-6057
304-293-5201 ext. 31547
jweems@wvu.edu