Public (and private) universities and transportation planning

In Maryland, state universities have to update their campus master plan every six years. This makes the fact that at least two of the public educational institutions in the county that I am working in are dealing with their master plan update a potential opportunity.

But state institutions for the most part are exempt from local planning and zoning requirements. So most of their work on master planning hasn't involved the county planners at all.

And the state master plan requirements for public institutions on higher education don't seem to have much in the way of transportation demand management requirements for students or staff.

Certainly most of the universities have shuttle bus systems, but most of them aren't dealing very broadly with nonautomobile based solutions, unlike say Ripon College (see "Ripon College gives freshmen free bikes for no-car pledges" from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) or Oregon Health Sciences University, which has a great program and brochure on bicycle commuting (not to mention they run the Aerial Tramway there).

The University of California Davis has one of the most balanced transportation demand management programs of a typical university, with personnel dedicated to bicycling and walking planning, not just operating buses or parking lots.

Baltimore does have the Collegetown Network, which provides a shuttle bus system between some of the colleges, and there is a Collegetown bicycle route connecting a bunch of the schools including Hopkins, Morgan State and others. (See "City enacts new bike-route network " from the Johns Hopkins University Newsletter.)

Too bad that the State of Maryland higher education master planning requirements aren't set up to address this.

That's another policy to change, at the state level albeit one out of the scope of work or timeframe I have been given to accomplish the task before me (creating a bicycle and pedestrian plan for 1/2 of the county's urban area).