Letter: A Proposal to Reduce Traffic Downtown

As a 23-year resident of North Prospect St. in downtown Amherst, I have seen the negative effects of excessive driving in my neighborhood. As everyone who lives in downtown Amherst knows, after each blessedly-quiet summer, heavy traffic resumes with an unwelcome roar in September as student renters return to town. All too often, students drive their cars between the rental properties where they live and UMass campus parking lots. I propose a partial solution to this problem: Stop giving drivers who reside close to the campus permission to park on campus.

I recently spoke with a young woman who lives on my street. A student at the Isenberg School of Management, she told me: “I pay to park every time I go to class. I go everywhere by car. I love to drive!” This young woman lives less than a mile from the Isenberg School, a 5-minute bike ride or a 19-minute walk. If she were to consult the bus schedule, it would take her about 8 minutes, including the walk to the bus stop. But she prefers to drive, even if she has to pay for the prvilege every time she goes to school.

OK, I get it. Young people living “on their own” for the first time, supplied (mostly by their indulgent parents) with late-model cars (usually oversized and overpowered) are enjoying a taste of adult freedom and independence. At least it is what they perceive as freedom and independence, since I believe over-dependence on cars is a pernicious form of slavery. I am 66 years old and, although I am by no means an athlete, can get to almost any location on the UMass campus from my home by bicycle in under 10 minutes. When I asked my young neighbor and her housemates if they had bikes, they looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language.

Excessive vehicular traffic ruins the quality of life in Amherst. Vehicular traffic damages our streets, is often noisy (have other readers noted the recent upsurge in souped-up cars with ear-splitting exhaust noise?), and is flatly contrary to the goal of reducing car dependence and its negative impacts on the climate.

There is another more subtle but no less insidious consequence of driving through town: People who drive have a far more limited experience of being in a particular place. They have less situational awareness and little sense that they are in a neighborhood. Unlike walking, cycling, or taking public transit, cars effectively cut people off from their surroundings and eliminate the kinds of serendipitous encounters with people and places that make life in town rewarding. In short, cars cause immense damage to the fabric of a community.

UMass should stop selling parking passes to students, faculty, and staff who reside within a two-mile radius of the center of the campus. The University should, of course, issue passes to those who must drive to campus (in practice, individuals who have handicaps or other special needs). For all others, the University should permit parking only on a strictly temporary basis, such as when an individual must deliver or pick up something on campus. Under this plan, my young neighbor would no longer be permitted to park her car on campus simply because she “loves driving.”

This simple and effective proposal rests on something that enlightened urban planners have known for many years: One of the best ways to reduce excessive driving and over-dependence on cars is to reduce the ready availability of parking. (See: Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.) The idea also recognizes that it is easy for most healthy people to commute less than two miles between home and campus on foot, by bike, or by the ample service offered by PVTA buses (which is provided free of charge to UMass students, faculty, and staff during the academic year).

Cars may be a necessary fact of modern life, but there is no reason for Amherst residents to suffer the consequences of frivolous, unnecessary, and ultimately destructive car traffic on downtown streets. One of the most effective ways to deal with this problem is to make it much harder to park these behemoths on campus.

Alex Kent has lived on North Prospect St. in Amherst since 2001.