Don’t be an SOV

Duke received As in nearly every category of the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card. Indeed, the Board of Trustees has invested substantially in cleaner power generation, LEED building certification and environmental education.

Looking around, you’d hardly realize one of the greatest contributors of Duke’s carbon emissions has yet to be addressed.

The University’s October 2009 Climate Action Plan highlighted Single Occupancy Vehicles, or SOVs, as the single greatest contributor to Duke’s transportation emissions, but months later, the University has failed to truly regulate vehicles on campus. Duke needs to invest in the behavioral shift that will turn our sprawling campus into a walking city. Ironically, this isn’t an investment at all. It’s a matter of policy.

Duke is generous in allowing freshmen to have cars on campus. Many area universities, like the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Wake Forest University, require that freshmen park in satellite lots, or they don’t issue freshmen parking permits at all. That Duke freshmen not only have relatively cheap on-campus parking, but also have the most convenient parking on campus, fosters a car-dependence that follows students from the moment they drive onto East Campus. Freshmen understand cars to be a part of campus life, and they develop social behavior that centers on their personal vehicles.

Addressing SOVs is the biggest environmental challenge any city or campus can face—bigger than power generation or fleet transportation. Why? Because you can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it. In sprawling North Carolina, it’s nearly impossible to expect people to forgo their cars. Durham was designed for drivers, and despite the high density of homes and businesses in the area, there isn’t a single grocery store in realistic walking distance of West Campus.

But freshmen live in downtown Durham, with shops and restaurants just a stone’s throw from the East Campus walls. With frequent, free bus service around campus, and SafeRides in operation at all hours of the night, freshmen will find it easy to get to where they need to be. Pair this with free Duke shuttles to RDU for the holidays and a growing ZipCar fleet on East Campus, and it’s hard to justify having a car in the first place.

Ending first-year parking is the first step toward breaking Duke’s unsustainable car culture and creating an interconnected walking community. Unaccustomed to having a car on campus, rising sophomores are more likely to remain carless on West. By issuing permits only to students with demonstrated need, Duke can make its campus a more active residential community and still facilitate the needs of students who absolutely must have cars.

Will it ever happen? Though the University tends to pussyfoot around serious policy changes, Duke stands to gain a lot from ending freshman parking. From a logistical standpoint, it’s the key to resolving a number of impending problems for Parking and Transportation Services that would ultimately have doomed campus drivers.

As the Medical Center grows, the demand for parking has become untenable and debt service on new parking decks is strangling an already cash-strapped campus services department (the Medical Center freed itself of the financial burden of parking by paying a nominal lump sum when the University’s two parking departments merged in 2003). To accommodate commuters, Parking and Transportation Services leases a number of off-campus lots for employee parking, and provides free shuttle service between these lots and campus.

Eliminating freshman parking would let the University abandon its leased lots and shuttle service, and provide convenient parking for employees willing to pay a premium to be on campus. At night, when employees drive home, East Campus won’t look like a busy parking lot anymore—it will look like the close residential community it was intended to be.

The rare confluence of environmental, cultural, and financial arguments for ending freshman parking seems to make this policy move a lock for the University. If a decision like this is made before the newest class enrolls, it’s doubtful incoming freshmen will even notice the change.

Mike Lefevre is a Trinity junior and chief of staff of Duke Student Government.

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