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Comment by mwattsun | Hacker News Reader

You forgot to mention that UCSC sits on a huge tract of land that they refuse to build student housing on for reasons I can't fathom.

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NIMBYs in the city sue the university to stop all housing, infrastructure, or other things that may allow for more students or reduce their problems.

Fortunately there have been modifications to CEQA last year to prevent these abuses of the law that result in worse environmental outcomes (students driving long distances rather than living on campus)

The original plan was to build out UCSC a lot more. I think the regents lost their motivation after building colleges 9 and 10 and also I think if they built more student housing, they'd have to build more parking lots (so many students have cars) and the traffic in the city would increase tremendously.

> if they built more student housing, they'd have to build more parking lots

There is another solution to this!

If you think you can solve CA's addiction to cars, I'm all ears.

> think you can solve CA's addiction to cars

No need. We're solving a narrow problem: students' need to park on campus. Out-of-town commuter and part-time students will need a car. But everyone else is solvable.

Specifically, Merrill and Oakes college have that parking lot, and there's a parking structure by the Earth/sciences building, and another one up above college 11, and several more. Once you get on campus though, there's a reasonably good shuttle to take you around campus, so you just need to park somewhere on campus and then give yourself enough time to take the shuttle to your destination. If you're living on campus, you only need to get off campus to go to the local downtown bar scene, or for other extracurriculars, but there's a bus that takes you downtown so as a student you can get away with not having a car.

that's not how car problems are solved in California.

> not how car problems are solved in California

Stop trying to solve the problem for California. Focus on the narrow problem. Universities everywhere operate as a parallel population.

Well, it's also not how car problems are solved at UCSC, either.

UCSC is an enclave on a hill with limited transport routes to downtown or the rest of the world. And the UCSC leadership has its hands tied by many different things; they can't just say "OK no cars on campus except if you are a commuter".

> UCSC is an enclave on a hill with limited transport routes to downtown or the rest of the world

Right, this is how you solve it. (Most students don’t need a car parked on campus to get to the rest of the world from Santa Cruz.)

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