ROAD RAGE
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Cary Gymnastics Center
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Cross with Caution
WVU Child Learning Center
WVU Coliseum
Intersection improvements planned for this summer may make travel near the Creative Arts Center a little safer. ➼
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f you’ve ever driven near the Coliseum on a weekday or commuted to a class on the Evansdale campus, you’ve probably played Morgantown’s own live version of chicken. Students in search of free parking at the Coliseum and at Krepps Park dart across five lanes of traffic to get to class. If they’re crossing Monongahela Boulevard, there’s a haven mid-way at the median—but if they’re crossing Patteson Drive, their only break is a hopefully unoccupied left-turn lane. “Mon Boulevard isn’t that much of a problem,” says senior theater major Nora Perone, who does this every day, sometimes multiple times. “But crossing from Krepps Park is horrific. You end up playing chicken with the traffic.” It’s no joke—a student was killed there by a hit-and-run driver in fall 2013. What about the crosswalk at the Mon Boulevard-Patteson Drive intersection? Commuters say the wait there can be really long—and Nora doesn’t even know how long it is because she’s never walked that far out of her way. “Students aren’t going to follow the rules, so the university may as well adjust,” she says of the distant crosswalk. This summer WVU is adjusting. Working with city and state transportation agencies, the university will give students safe crossings at those locations. Even better, other aspects of the university’s multi-year Evansdale Campus Revitalization Project are planned to entice students to park within Evansdale and to leave their cars all day—reducing the numbers of both pedestrians and vehicles on those heavily traveled main roads.
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Morgantown • APR/MAY 2014
Core Arboretum
Evansdale drive & the Coliseum at Monongahela Boulevard • Evansdale Drive will be shifted north to align it with upgraded vehicle access at the arboretum end of the Coliseum parking lot. • A four-way traffic signal will be installed. • Marked and signalled crosswalk..
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existing campus buildings
new construction
Most visible for drivers will be the change to that somewhat makeshift threeway intersection where the arboretum and the Coliseum lot come together on Mon Boulevard. WVU plans to shift Evansdale Drive, the leg of that three-way “T,” a little north toward the Creative Arts Center (CAC), and to align it with upgraded vehicle access at the arboretum end of the Coliseum parking lot. A new four-way traffic signal will be installed there, along with a marked and signalled crosswalk—right at the place where lots of students now risk their lives to cross.
new traffic patterns
If you’re worried about the effect on Coliseum parking, fewer than 10 spots will be lost, according to WVU Facilities Management Associate Director John Thompson—and they’ll be more than made up for with 120 new spots at the CAC and more elsewhere on Evansdale. On Patteson Drive, a new threeway signal is going in at the currently unsignalled intersection with Fine Arts Drive, the street that runs along the back side of the CAC. Currently, making that left turn onto Fine Arts Drive can be difficult, and making a left turn from