The facts: Transportation held two town hall meetings looking for student input on a campus mobility plan for the next 10 years. Placement of a traffic gate on Dan Allen Drive is one item up for discussion.

Our opinion: The issues that could arise with this new gate could outweigh the original problems. Transportation should consider other options to decrease traffic on Dan Allen Drive.

  NCSU Transportation hired consultants to prepare an outline of implementation and funding needs dealing with campus mobility last fall, a plan covering the next 10 years. During this process, Transportation has been seeking student input on the suggested solutions to problems.  The focus of one of their planned projects is the creation of a traffic gate by the bridge on Dan Allen Drive, much like the one on Stinson Drive. There have been complaints that buses are late and traffic is so heavy on Dan Allen it poses safety hazards to drivers and pedestrians. Transportation says the purpose of this gate would be to control traffic between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. to allow buses to arrive on time.  We see multiple issues with this proposal. The accessibility to main campus would be hindered for students, faculty and staff if a gate was to be built. While Transportation is just considering this plan, our feedback is to leave Dan Allen alone.  Students who own Resident East parking passes know how convenient it is to park in the central campus RE spots; however, if there was a gate, they would have to find an alternative route to their spot from Hillsborough Street. Anyone with a campus map can see the only other access points to our campus, in terms of transportation, are Dunn Avenue and Morrill Drive. These two entryways are not only more inconvenient to drivers, but they would become just as congested as Dan Allen. Dan Allen is a vital artery to transportation on campus, and by plugging it up with a gate, Transportation is fixing one congestion problem and creating another.  The logic behind a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. gate is flawed in that it doesn’t consider the prime traffic hours of the work day -before 9 a.m. and after 5 p.m. If drivers who are no  trying to access campus want to drive through this street, they would do so when they were either leaving or coming home from work, when the gate wouldn’t be in use. Overall, projected problems seem to outweigh the potential benefits of this idea.