Jason Koski/University Photography

Over the next 10 years, Cornell (seen in an aerial view from B Lot and the Vet College) will construct 1.4 million gross square feet of new building space. One of the challenges for university transportation planners is how to make the campus both parking- and commuter-friendly. Copyright © Cornell University

Parking. Traffic. Public transportation. New buildings. A busier, expanding campus that preserves Cornell's historic character and feel, while supporting its academic mission. These are all challenges that campus planners face in the coming decade. Each is its own issue; all are interrelated. If there is one overarching goal, it is to make Cornell a more pedestrian-friendly, model campus in the decades ahead.

First, consider the statistics -- not necessarily cause and effect, but instructive, even so:

• Over the next 10 years the university will construct 1.4 million gross square feet of new building space.
• There are about 29,000 people working and learning on campus every day, a 5 percent increase over the past decade.
• Currently 20 percent of Cornell employees live outside Tompkins County and 35 percent live outside the town of Ithaca.
• In the past 11 years parking spaces have grown from 11,419 to 12,808 with additional spaces to be added in the future, a 12 percent growth.

All of which point to the need for a critical focus on planning. To date, planning has pretty much been concentrated on balancing open space and density on the central campus, said University Planner Mina Amundsen. But, she added, "Maintaining a pedestrian-oriented environment, while preserving landscape features and views, and meeting building needs will continue to be concerns for the future."

Amundsen

Amundsen is leading Cornell's visionary portal to the future called the Comprehensive Master Plan (CMP) as co-chair of the CMP Working Committee with Vice Provost John Siliciano. The CMP was launched in April 2006 and will guide the long-term physical development of the Ithaca campus proper through the next 10 to 25 years, in consultation with bordering neighborhoods.

Speaking on campus recently, urban planner Cyndi Rottenberg-Walker, a partner with Urban Strategies, the Toronto consulting firm that will produce the CMP report, said, "The master plan will provide a tremendous opportunity for Cornell to become a model of sustainable campus planning, which will benefit not only the university but the entire region."

Broadly speaking, this goal of a sustainable campus hinges on how three critical areas are resolved: Parking, new building space and transportation. Each is a separate, challenging subject, yet all are part of a complex web of interrelations that are, as the CMP Working Group makes clear, unprecedented in their scope.

Parking

As a prime example of how parking is linked to central planning, in the early 1990s, Cornell's Transportation and Mail Services (TMS) was facing the possibility of adding some 2,500 to 5,000 new parking spaces to meet anticipated demands. Those spaces were never built -- they never had to be: Through an aggressive commuter plan, faculty and staff riders were reduced by about 2,200 drivers a day using public transit programs and car pooling incentives (rider-service programs such as OmniRide and RideShare).

Even so, complaints about parking on campus persist, said David Lieb, assistant director for public information at TMS, who has heard his share of parking pejoratives. Historically, he insists, the transportation office at Cornell has been doing its level best to meet the changing traffic problems in a university that just keeps on growing.

"We will continue to make sure there is parking for people on campus who need it," said Lieb. "And we will continue to work with other large employers and municipal agencies to develop good community-based car- sharing, van-pooling and park-and-ride systems."

Lieb

If there is a parking problem at Cornell, Lieb noted, it is mostly one of perception. Admittedly, there are some losses in parking spaces. When the new pedestrian plaza is built in front of Bailey Hall beginning next spring, it will come at the cost of about 65 parking spaces that will affect 90 permit holders in a central campus area. The lot between Teagle and Lynah Rink is forever closed to visitor parking due to construction of the Life Sciences Technology Building. The parking areas behind Rand and Sibley halls will be gone once the Milstein Hall project gets under way, although transportation services is looking into alternatives for the area, said Lieb.

This is a story of loss but also of growth.

Since 1995 parking spaces at Cornell have increased to about 12,808 from 11,419, according to William Stebbins, associate director of TMS. Included in this growth are 190 additional spaces in Hoy Parking Garage; and there are plans for a partial underground garage, with 280 spaces, when work begins on the Martha Van Rensselaer Hall North replacement next year.

In particular, Lieb said, there are three myths about parking that need debunking:

• Myth 1: Freshmen are the problem. Wrong. In fact, only a mere 158 first-year students own parking permits on campus. Sophomores come in at 142; juniors 122; and only 92 seniors possess Cornell parking permits. Some 897 graduate students and postdocs own permits and, like seniors, are more likely to live off campus. "Obviously they have many more cars, but they are not bringing them to campus every day," Lieb said. Faculty and staff commuters make up the bulk of permit ownerships on campus -- roughly 6,400 drivers.
• Myth 2: Parking fees are a Big Red cash cow. Not so. "Parking is a subsidized commodity for everybody," Lieb said, sipping his tea carefully like a man who has become used to having to explain things patiently. Each parking space, he said, actually costs the university about $1,000 annually in maintenance, debt service and other fees.
• Myth 3: Enforcement of parking violations is arbitrary and unfair and a big moneymaker for Cornell. Hardly, according to Lieb. Those human beings in Cornell red jackets, the bane of every overtime and illegal parker's life, are in fact performing a customer service for people who pay for usurped parking. The folks who write the tickets also work in information booths and handle other duties. "All this adds up to is a program that simply strives to break even," Lieb stressed.

Transportation

As previously indicated, the more that Cornell employees can be persuaded to use public transportation, the less the need for additional parking spaces. Cornell has already taken the lead in trying to persuade more employees to take the bus to work. And through a progressive program, the number of faculty and staff driving their cars to work has significantly dropped. About 2.3 million rides, or almost 78 percent of the Tompkins Consolidated Area Transit (TCAT) total fares each year, are purchased by Cornell for employees.

Lindsay France/University Photography

Commuters who have parked in A Lot board a bus to central campus on a recent weekday morning.

The university also subsidizes employees on a monthly basis for part of the cost of bus fares through the Tioga, Chemung, Schuyler and Cortland transit systems. Cornell does not directly subsidize those bus companies as it does TCAT.

Beyond this, Cornell's TMS has been working on a transportation-focused Generic Environmental Impact Statement (t-GEIS) in conjunction with the Town of Ithaca Planning Board. This is a large-scale intensive study of Cornell transportation planning and potential impacts on area traffic flows, parking and related topics, primarily in the areas surrounding the university.

The study scrutinizes commuter traffic patterns to and from Cornell and takes into account not only automobiles, but bicycle and pedestrian traffic and the impact of traffic flow through neighborhoods.

The t-GEIS initiative is not intended to address parking or transportation on campus, but rather to look at the effects of potential population growth at Cornell over the next decade on communities surrounding Cornell. That growth includes the number of campus commuters. According to t-GEIS, 55 percent of Cornell's faculty, staff and graduate students live outside the city and town of Ithaca. Only 20 percent live within the city proper, and another 25 percent live in the town of Ithaca.

Buildings

Both parking and transportation are ultimately affected by the addition of working space. As the campus expands, Cornell plans to spend $1.6 billion on new construction through 2016, which includes the addition of 1.4 million gross square feet. Amundsen noted that campus population growth does not correlate directly to space growth, but few doubt that the campus is going to become a denser, even busier place.

Deena Rambaum/Publications and Marketing

Source: 2006-07 Capital Plan. Larger version

There are a total of 19,140 students on campus and about 9,622 full- and part-time staff and faculty. That's not including temporary workers and transitory personnel, such as visiting scholars, who can number as high as 2,500.

The university's transportation network, the various utility systems and academic space programming are all important planning considerations, said Amundsen. "The CMP will incorporate other planning efforts currently under way by the university's transportation and utilities departments, as well as major ongoing or proposed projects, including the new Life Sciences Technology Building now under construction."

How will all this ultimately affect the campus? To find out, CMP members have conducted some 350 interviews across a broad spectrum of on- and off-campus constituencies and have invited input from Cornell students, faculty and staff. Neighboring communities have been engaged, and public open houses will be held to report progress and gather feedback. The plan is expected to be completed in fall 2007.

Speaking to the Cornell Board of Trustees in October, Steve Golding, executive vice president for finance and administration and CMP committee member, declared: "The continuing evolution of the campus presents both opportunities and challenges. A long-term plan will help ensure we capitalize on the former and overcome the latter."

Concluded Lieb: "We're trying to maintain some degree of status quo and to keep the needs for growth and access balanced one way or another."

We invite your comments on this story and will post your thoughts here. Only signed e-mail will be considered.

Nov. 30, 2006: Comment from Mark Eisner, <me35@cornell.edu>:
I read with interest Franklin Crawford's article in the Nov. 30 Cornell Chronicle. It is heartening to learn that Cornell is working to reduce automobile commuting. In the 10 years that I have been working at Cornell in my current role (I was also here from 1965-1975) I have never gotten a parking permit, choosing instead to participate in OmniRide and to bike to work.

It is very disappointing that bicycle commuting is barely mentioned at all in the article. At age 68 I am able to bike to work (I live about 2 miles from my office) almost every day except when it is raining, the road is snow covered, or the temperature is below 25 degrees. That means I can bike here about 80 percent of class days. On threatening days I park the bike in the parking garage and sometimes have to take the bus home and retrieve the bike by car after hours. (It would be great if there were more covered parking available - no one likes to ride a wet bike. I urged the Duffield planner, Mark Spiro, to include this in the building plan, but bikes get ignored when new facilities are developed).

About half of the faculty in my department commute by bike. I have anecdotal evidence that more people would commute by bike if it were safer and easier to do so.

In my opinion Cornell and Ithaca are appalling, unfriendly communities for bikes given how enlightened we are in other matters. This community compares unfavorably to more densely populated college communities such as the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Harvard in Cambridge, the University of Washington in Seattle and others. About the only thing we can boast about in this vein are the bike racks on the buses, which are great.

I think there is much that Cornell can do to remedy the situation. It is striking that about $1 million of state money is being spent to widen Triphammer Bridge with a bike lane but there are almost no bike paths north of the bridge, and the lanes just south of it are configured in a very unsafe way (the northbound bike lane peters out with no recourse for the rider since it is bordered by a high bank.)

Some other points:

• Cornell owns much of the land near campus along Triphammer Road, which is bordered by ditches that could easily be covered and turned into bike lanes (particularly along Jessup Field). I live on a corner of Triphammer and would be happy to make a 3-foot strip of my land fronting on Triphammer available for a bike path.
• The center of the unpaved portion of Bluegrass Lane could be turned into a bike lane (leaving the sides unpaved to discourage car traffic) that would permit commuters from the Northeast to get all the way to campus (via the golf course and Cradit Farm Road) without tangling with heavy traffic. The 10-year transportation plan includes this and other bike paths but no implementation schedule.
• Hanshaw Road has a badly deteriorated shoulder that is unsafe for biking.
• The East Hill bike path from Game Farm Road could be continued past the power plant to Dryden Road to avoid the very steep hill up to Maple Avenue with which it now ends. It could be extended eastward on the former railroad right of way much of the way towards Etna and Freeville.
• The total prohibition of bicycles from many pathways on campus could be relaxed to "no bicycles when pedestrians are present." Marking a bike lane between Statler and Uris would make it possible to bypass the dangerous Campus Road-East Avenue intersection.
• Rules against reckless bicycling could be better enforced to avoid endangering pedestrians -- as it is, safe riders are being penalized by prohibitions because of reckless riders that should be disciplined.

These are just a few of the ideas that could come to fruition if there were a greater commitment to bicycle commuting to Cornell. I am on the faculty of the department that was instrumental in the establishment of the Cornell bus system many years ago. If I can be of assistance in planning to make bicycle commuting more attractive, please let me know.

Mark Eisner, associate director, School of Operations Research and Industrial Engineering