^{Go directly to the original of the resource described below.}

Eran Ben-Joseph is a professor of urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the author of Rethinking A Lot: The Design and Culture of Parking. In this essay for The New York Times, he shares some of the book’s ideas and philosophy. (You can purchase the book at Amazon here and, without increasing your cost, the society will receive a small bit of revenue.)

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, Road Diets: Making Streets Slim Down Is Good For Pedestrians, Businesses And Even Traffic, to access the resource described, below.

SCUP headquarters is in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where the city is engaged in changing some downtown streets, using bulb-outs. From our first-hand experience with one of the streets - before, during, and after the change - this really works.

When a road diet is applied to a road with at least four lanes overall, it often removes one lane in each direction. The space made available by eliminating these two lanes can be used for creating a dedicated left-turn lane, as well as sidewalks, parkways, bike lanes, or a dedicated right-turn lane. Surprisingly, eliminating one through-lane in each direction does not result in a proportional loss of car-carrying capacity, and the addition of a dedicated left-turn lane (and sometimes a dedicated right-turn lane as well) helps reduce congestion. Adding turn lanes in this manner can also decrease accidents, because it results in fewer lane changes and better visibility for on-coming traffic. All of these benefits are useful in explaining road diets to skeptical traffic engineers, or reluctant business or community members.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to "Debt Hunters: Is Your Campus Missing Out on Megabucks Worth of Unpaid Parking Tickets?"

Inspired by the University of Central Florida's tapping him for $35 for an unpaid parking ticket from a visit nearly three years ago, Inside Higher Ed writer Jack Stripling investigates and finds a trend: Better technology to identify scofflaws and concerted efforts to tap into buckets of money owed to it. Some even hire collection agencies. UCF hired a company to collect from a pool of nearly $400,000 in unpaid tickets and has already collected $71,000. It can be tricky though and you might irritate alumns.

Central Florida’s increased collection efforts predate the deep financial crisis that has led to dramatic budget cuts across the state, but Merck says it’s “serendipitous” that the university was searching for cash under its proverbial couch cushions just before the recession hit.

Florida’s State University System does not receive any state dollars for transportation and parking services, so the brunt of the cost for parking decks and shuttles is passed on to students through per-credit-hour fees and decal charges. Thus, by failing to recoup parking fines, the university ends up increasing the financial burden on students. So while chasing campus visitors across state lines for $35 may seem excessive, failing to do so is unfair to students who end up with the tab, Merck says.

“We owe it to our students to try to collect it,” he says.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link on Go With the Flow: Campus Traffic and Parking Solutions

For University Business magazine, Ann McClure finds 20 tips/best practices regarding campus transportation management. They are divided into categories: Parking Practices, Mass Transit Options, Traffic Flow Tactics, Ride Shares, and Bikers Haven.

“The old-time pressures of parking and congestion are combining with the sustainability issue,” says Philip L. Winters, director of the Center’s TDM Program. Parking lots are not only expensive to build but take up valuable space that can be better used for classrooms or even green space. Solo drivers are also a big contributor to the campus carbon footprint. Safety is another issue because the more traffic you have the more accidents you might have, points out Sara Hendricks, the center’s senior research associate. However, improving traffic flow and parking on campus is very place dependent, Hendricks notes. Not every campus can tap into a strong local mass transit system. “It boils down to making sure you have options and not focusing on a single strategy,” Winters advises.

My personal and professional life collided recently. By an admittedly rough estimate, some five million cars have returned to campuses throughout the country in the past few weeks, and a couple of them were mine.

While their student users are in class, cars collectively occupy some 60 square miles of campus space, most of this being land allocated for parking. Back them up end to end (a common occurrence on many campuses these days) and these cars would stretch over halfway around the globe, or from Boston to Berkeley and back again—twice. Arrange them side by side (a common occurrence on the roads leading to campuses) and they would cover metropolitan Washington.

Last week I sat through interviews to select a master-plan consultant for a mid-size university. The university has grown steadily the last 10 years, and is seeking to update its master plan. We are advising the university (and its selection committee) on transportation, infrastructure, and stormwater issues.

Each of the firms was highly qualified and gave a very good presentation. There were common threads: All sought to be sustainable in their approach; all focused on place-making and on spaces for socializing and exchanging ideas; all were visionary and supported the mission of the university. The planning process was to be participatory and inclusive. The presentation materials were seductive. One firm presented sepia-toned plans supported by gauzy watercolor vignettes representing a vision of what the campus could be in the future. Remarkably, the vision was car-free.

This fall, Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., is offering freshmen free mountain bikes, helmets and locks in exchange for a promise not to bring a car to campus. The $300-per-student cost is funded by private donations.

The college's president, David Joyce, says the project was meant to avoid building a parking garage, but its side effects are beneficial: less pollution, more exercise and savings on gas.

The timing was right, Joyce says: "We were either extremely brilliant or extremely lucky."