Paving paradise? Ole Miss students meet to talk transportation...

Last week I was invited to a meeting of the Oxford/Ole Miss Transportation Focus Group on the campus of Ole Miss.  The meeting served to gather information through an open discussion concerning the improvement of environmentally friendly transportation around Oxford and Ole Miss.  Information shared at this event will be used to compile a news story for The Oxford Enterprise.

After discussing issues such as improving Oxford University Transit, bike sharing, car sharing, and other methods of traveling around Oxford, this focus group overwhelmingly concluded that Ole Miss needs to build an eco-friendly parking garage.  We all determined that more parking would be a sure solution to many of the problems of transportation on campus.  Perhaps if students could use their cars to get to campus, and then park, they could take advantage of other methods of transportation during their time on campus?

Among the 12 or so people who attended this event, only one person was a frequent user of O.U.T. - Oxford University Transit (new bus pictured above.)  This is the free bus for students that runs all over town.  (Costs $ for community members, click here to read current fares.)  A few students said that they wouldn't consider the bus because they did not want to have to rely on it.  They did not want to have to wait for the bus, if their class got out early, and then they might be stuck on campus.  The bike sharing program seemed to be of little use to the students at this meeting, as they said they either didn't know much about it, or it seemed too time consuming, as in the time it would take for a student to get to a bike sharing station, rent the bike, ride the bike to class, and lock the bike on a bike rack - it would have just been faster to drive (if they could find a parking space on campus.)  A handful of students admitted to skipping class simply because they could not find a parking space on campus.  When asked if the cost of gas was an issue for travel or road trips, all agreed that it was not an issue.  And when asked about the Ole Miss solar-powered golf carts on campus (pictured below) that often offer rides to students, one student very honestly admitted that she had declined an opportunity to ride because there were no other students on the golf cart at the time and she thought she would seem weird if anyone saw her riding on it.   

A few other issues were mentioned, like recycling and energy consumption on campus.  Students were unaware of the curbside recycling program, offered by the city of Oxford, and they all agreed it was a shame that so many bottles of beer on the square that are consumed do not get recycled.  One student who had actually been to the recycling drop off center on Molly Barr Road, told us that she was surprised that she had to break down her cardboard boxes to fit them through the slot of the dumpster to recycle them.  It seemed like extra work, to have to break down the box, when her previous recycling experience in her home town did not entail having to flatten boxes.  Energy consumption on campus was dismissed as the students agreed that Ole Miss would not be interested in spending the money to make changes to old buildings.  In fact, the University has made a commitment that all new buildings on campus will be LEED Certified. The Green Buildings Program is currently in development, which will operate within the Office of Facilities Planning. Two LEED Certified buildings are currently under construction on campus- the new law school and the Center for Manufacturing Excellence.  We decided that Ole Miss might be interested in building an eco-friendly underground parking garage on campus, as they could charge money for parking during the week and would potentially make a fortune during football weekends.  Perhaps it could be a win-win situation, if Ole Miss would consider it.  After a bit of research on the web, I found this info about regular parking lots:

Parking lots can be bad for the environment for many obvious reasons. Increasing need for more parking lots may indicate that more cars are on the road, which means that more gas is being consumed and more pollutants exhausted into the air. More pavement means less green space, thereby reducing the number of trees and plants that serve as natural “air cleaners” by absorbing carbon dioxide in the air and releasing oxygen. More pavement also means less open soil that can collect rainwater, which helps to replenish natural aquifers. Areas that have less of a natural groundwater supply suffer even more from an overabundance of parking lots.

Cars are dirty pieces of machinery and leak all sorts of toxic liquids onto parking lots. Oil, grease, coolant and other fluids collect on the asphalt and sit until rain washes it into storm drains which may drain to lakes and streams. The runoff from parking lots is often highly polluted.  Another negative effect of parking lots is called the urban heat island. The asphalt or concrete in parking lots more readily absorbs and retains the heat from the sun’s rays than the surrounding ground. This in turn raises surrounding temperatures a few degrees, affecting what is called the “urban growing season.”


There are such things as eco-friendly parking garages - click here to check out this article from USA Today, in which Gloria Ohland states, "Unless there are parking spaces, you're not going to get people to use transit."

Thanks so much to Mitch McCauley for inviting me to this meeting.  It was so important to hear the honest opinions of students.  Until gas prices go up or public transit becomes glamorous, I'm afraid that the student body may not take advantage of the giant strides that Ole Miss is making in terms of transportation in this small town.  Check out the University's website - UM Green Inititative - for good news on the eco-friendly frontier: http://www.olemiss.edu/green/index.html.

Please also read this post from a lecture that I attended back in November - Red, Blue & Green - Ole Miss' Mike Mossing & Jim Morrison talk substantive change beyond "green marketing"