Hit the snooze button. Grab a latte. Run to class. Avoid getting hit by cars? If this last statement doesn’t sound like a part of your morning routine, you might have to start getting ready for it.
The city of Coral Gables, a community notorious for its hyper sensitive zoning restrictions, has mandated that UM must build a circulator road through campus before it can start construction on any other new projects.
What the city of Coral Gables, a planned community that has shared the neighborhood with our university since 1926, fails to understand is how inconvenient a road through our extremely walkable campus would be. What our own university hasn’t recognized is how ridiculous and ineffective their proposed road actually is.
The residents of Coral Gables who would benefit most from this road are asking for all university related traffic, from delivery trucks, to your physics professor’s Toyota, to be re-directed out of their way, and into a bustling, pedestrian-friendly environment.
Although Coral Gables held a public hearing, open to anyone, to discuss the road, at the university the project has been so shrouded in secrecy that students and faculty could not have possibly been well enough informed to attend the public hearing and express their point of view.
The University of Miami is one of the nation’s top 50 schools; the city of Coral Gables should be proud to call us their neighbor, and should be open and willing to listen to the opinions of the people who use the campus every day.
But the university has intentionally left the members of its community out of the discussion, which is unacceptable given the fact that we are the one footing the bill for this road.
There needs to come a point where students and Coral Gables residents can talk face to face about the pros and cons of this road.
Despite briefing select faculty and student leaders UM has done nothing to invite discussion of this topic from the greater student body.
It is ridiculous that this publication, which seeks to be a credible source of information for its readers by providing a balanced perspective, has gotten more facts about the project from the City of Coral Gables than its own university.
For more information on the circular road turn to page two.
Editorials represent the majority view of The Miami Hurricane editorial staff.