CHAPEL HILL -- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty, staff and students will get the chance to share their thoughts on parking and transportation during forums scheduled Oct. 1-2 at several campus locations.

Information about the campus development plan's impact on parking and transportation will be available for review at the forums. The development plan marks the first 10 years of the campus master plan, which charts Carolina's growth for the next 50 years.

The forums are being sponsored by the Advisory Committee on Transportation (ACT), a campus panel of faculty, staff and students charged with advising administrators on strategies for achieving convenient, safe and easy-to-use transportation to campus. ACT also will help the Department of Public Safety craft a five-year transportation and parking plan for Carolina.

"These forums will be just one of the ways that we will go about getting input from employees and students," said Derek Poarch, director of public safety and ACT chair. "Our goal is to arrive at a long-term vision of where our campus needs to go regarding parking and transportation issues, and it's critical that the entire Carolina community is a part of reaching that vision."

The ACT forums will be:

All Carolina faculty, staff and students, as well as UNC Health Care employees, are invited to drop by any of the forums, and they need not be there at the start time.

On hand will be representatives from Kimley-Horn and Associates Inc., a Raleigh-based transportation consulting firm that also is helping develop the five-year parking and transportation plan. They will answer questions and gather feedback to be considered as that plan takes shape.

The campus development plan calls for new construction totaling 5.9 million square feet and increasing the amount of green space on south campus, both of which will require removing some 20 acres of surface parking lots.

The plan also calls for replacing these lost parking spaces with eight new parking decks. But while the decks will provide enough spaces to meet the growing demand from campus visitors and UNC Health Care patients, they will not meet the growth in demand from employees and students. Campus planners say that means alternative transportation programs such as park-and-ride bus service will become more and more important.

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News Services Contact: Mike McFarland, (919)962-8953