If you don’t like the traffic around the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, blog about it, and the university will listen.
But time is running out. People have until the end of the year to submit comments on the university’s evolving campus and landscape master plan.
More than 1,500 students, faculty and staff have submitted feedback to UNL so far, expressing concerns about traffic and parking, voting on ideas they like and criticizing those they don’t — all on a website created for that purpose.
“I think we’ve had a pretty positive response to the different alternatives we presented,” said Jennifer Dam, assistant director of campus planning.
UNL hired Sasaki Associates of Watertown, Mass., to update its 2006 master plan, which was supposed to be in place until 2016.
Chancellor Harvey Perlman decided to update it because the university has grown. The new plan will be designed to accommodate Perlman’s goal of reaching 30,000 students by 2017.
“There’s been a real desire to strengthen our sense of place as an institution,” Dam said.
Sasaki presented three proposals for the city and east campuses during open houses last month. The proposals ranged from one that would use green spaces to emphasize different land uses to one that would extend malls on campus to create more green space.
Ideas presented include reverting Memorial Mall, now primarily a parking lot east of Memorial Stadium, into a green space. Another involves redesigning 14th Street where it crosses City Campus to include designated bike, shuttle and pedestrian lanes.
Planners also have proposed redesigning the traffic loop on East Campus so it moves traffic east and west instead of in a circle around campus.
“There are a lot of people who found the loop road to be disorienting and confusing,” Dam said.
Sasaki plans to host two more open houses, Monday and Tuesday.
Gina Ford, a principal at Sasaki, said the online feedback tools have been popular. The company launched a mapping tool that allows people to click on specific locations around campus and describe their experience with transportation, aesthetics and other issues in those locations.
It also recently launched a blogging tool created by Lincoln developer MindMixer that allows people to vote on and share ideas.
She said the more than 1,500 people who’ve commented on the master plan represent the most respondents the company has had at the hundreds of universities where it has hosted online feedback forums.
One person even uploaded a circulation scheme that provided Sasaki with some interesting ideas on improving transportation, Ford said.
“We found some good ideas we’ll share next week,” she said.
The company plans to combine the three proposals into one by January and finish the master plan by March. It hopes to gain approval from the University of Nebraska Board of Regents in late spring or early summer.
The drought in Nebraska has had some effect on the planning process, said UNL landscape architect Emily Casper. The university has had to reconsider its landscaping plan to reflect the scarcity of water, she said.
That means fewer plants that require large amounts of water.
“We have to think a lot differently about what kind of landscaping we use,” she said. “We can’t look exactly like all the other Big Ten schools.”
