The future of transportation at Western will focus on sustainability and shared space as new projects and policies are implemented during the next year.

This summer, crews continued the ongoing process to widen brick pathways on north campus to accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians, said Ed Simpson, assistant director of facilities design and planning administration for Facilities Management.

The university built new, more convenient bicycle and pedestrian routes on south campus to encourage walkers and bikers to go through campus instead of taking East College Way, which is primarily used by cars and construction vehicles for Miller Hall, Simpson said. This summer, the pathway north of Fairhaven College was widened and realigned to better the approach to the rest of campus.

Bike and pedestrian paths will also be built around the new addition to Buchanan Towers before it opens in fall 2010, Simpson said. The paths will support both pedestrians and bicycles like the other new routes, but Simpson said he is not sure how many bicycles will travel along the ridge behind Buchanan Towers because of its steepness.

Western plans to put in a sidewalk between Buchanan Towers and Birnam Wood apartments next summer or fall. The city is putting in a traffic light at the intersection of 25th and Bill McDonald Parkway next summer, and the university will wait until this project is finished so it can match the city’s design, Simpson said.

Western has been working on creative ways to make transportation more sustainable throughout the last decade, said Carol Berry, the Sustainable Transportation Program manager.

Western’s Sustainable Transportation Program is creating an “all-pass” that would combine the student ID card with the bus pass, said A.J. Garcia, the Associated Students alternative transportation coordinator. The new cards would have two stripes: one for housing and dining and one for transit. The Sustainable Transportation Program hopes to implement the new passes by fall 2010.

Western currently pays WTA for actual bus passes rather than bus service, Garcia said. WTA gives Western a limited amount of bus passes each year, however thousands are lost each year. Students can get new bus passes for free, but ID cards cost $8 to replace. Garcia said he hopes fewer cards would be lost if the ID and bus pass were combined because it would still cost money to replace them.

Western is currently testing the bus passes for durability, Garcia said. Student IDs are thicker than bus passes and have an extra protective layer on each side. In theory, the combined passes should last longer than the current cards. The difference in width is being solved by WTA manually widening its card readers.

“The technology exists,” Garcia said. “It’s just a matter of making sure everything works with WTA and Western before we start handing them out to 10,000 [or] 12,000 students.”

The structure of campus has restricted on-campus transportation in the past. There still is not an efficient north-south bike route through campus, Wynn said. Motor vehicles have few options to get around campus, and pedestrians and bicyclists often take the fastest route, which can put them on roads with cars, Berry said.

Many new paths on south campus have been constructed to guide bikers and walkers away from roads for safety while still getting them where they need to go. In response to demand, the university has also put in more bike racks, which have been well received, Berry said.

Efficient transportation at Western comes down to sharing space. For example, on High Street, bicyclists, pedestrians, buses and motor vehicles must all interact in a narrow space. The Sustainable Transportation Program is making small changes to areas such as north campus that subtly tell drivers they are sharing space with pedestrians and vice versa, Berry said. Lower streetlights shine on sidewalks and under bushes rather than on streets, encouraging pedestrians to walk there. Crosswalks with creative designs could be an option, because they remind drivers to share the road and last longer because they are embedded in the pavement, Berry said. Reaction to the cues may not be conscious, but they help create the atmosphere of shared space, Berry said.

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