FAYETTEVILLE -- Transportation consultants brought plenty of ideas with them to the University of Arkansas this week, putting them on display in the Arkansas Union to get feedback on proposed changes in how people get to and from the university.
"We've already developed some ideas, and we're developing more ideas," said Lisa Jacobson, a senior associate with Boston-based Nelson\Nygaard.
Renderings and redrawn maps covered temporary display partitions set up at the student union.
"We could be sitting in our office in Boston and coming up with these ideas on our own, but that's not helpful if people here, we don't get their input," Jacobson said.
The firm has been hired by UA for $224,880 to develop a plan for managing a campus with a student population that has grown by about 47 percent since 2005, the last time such a study was put together. Jacobson said a draft could be ready by June.
A six-person consultant team on campus Monday through today visited crowded campus sites. Video installed at eight busy campus intersections will give the team a better count of how many cars, bicycles and pedestrians pass by, Jacobson said.
Before this week's visit, Nelson\Nygaard and the university did an online survey in January about transportation and parking issues. But Monday offered the team its first opportunity to put its ideas in front of the UA community.
At the student union, passersby contributed sticky notes scrawled with comments -- the colorful squares pasted around the drawings and maps put together by the consultants.
About 15 such notes surrounded a rendering that showed an idea of changing Dickson Street on campus.
"You know how the road is closed at Harmon and Dickson now during the daytime? What if we even brought that back another block, to Dickson and Duncan? What impact would that have?" Jacobson said, explaining one of the group's "proposed concepts." A rendering showed a barricaded section of the street that currently has cars passing over it.
Someone wrote "Good idea!" on one purple sticky note, with a few other notes in agreement, though the opinions were not unanimous.
Jon Forster, a parking specialist with Michigan-based firm Carl Walker, visited Harmon Avenue Parking Garage on Monday to see how backed up the garage gets. Carl Walker is a sub-consultant on the project.
"We get to see what people are struggling with," Forster said, adding, "you want everything to flow and work the best possible way for people."
Forster described concerns people have about parking at UA as being similar to issues elsewhere.
"Everybody wants a lot of free parking right near where they want to go. Don't we all, and that's just us, that's just human nature," Forster said. However, the hilly nature of UA's campus stands out, he said.
"What I would normally say that's a short walk on a flat campus, that may not be that short of a walk here," Forster said.
Visiting the consultants was Peter Nierengarten, sustainability director for Fayetteville.
"It really struck me how many ideas are being presented that do promote inclusion of active transportation, such as cycling or walking, and increased transit usage," Nierengarten said. The city has a role as a stakeholder in the plan, participating in several stakeholder meetings associated with process, he said.
Maddison Schuller, a UA student, said she often takes the bus from north of campus to get to school. She said she liked one idea of rerouting a bus line.
She said she filled out an online survey that was sent out earlier as part of the planning effort. About 5,000 responses were received, according to the university, and the temporary display noted about half of students reported driving to campus compared to 83 percent of faculty and staff.
Another poster described how almost 60 percent of survey respondents said better lighting would improve walking around campus.
About the survey, "I think things like that are important," Schuller said, "because people like to get their input in."
NW News on 04/01/2015