At the University of Minnesota, something big is happening. Well, yes, the football team is 6-1 for the first time since man set foot on the moon, but my sources tell me they are really just shell-shocked and reality has yet to fully sink in. No, what those crazy Gophers are really excited about is… transportation!

For those of you who do not keep close tabs on the Minneapolis campus of “the U,” as it is colloquially referred to by its denizens, big changes are about to take place on their Washington Avenue — the street that essentially divides the campus in two, separating the freshman dorms and some facilities from the rest of campus as well as the entertainment district. This is analogous to our University Avenue. (Oddly enough, their University Avenue runs from the campus to the capitol just like our Washington Avenue — whoa.)

But just wait, it gets freakier. Some of you may know that Madison is planning construction on University Avenue for this coming summer. Now before you start fleeing north, Minnesota is planning on doing the same thing to Washington Avenue. This, however, is where the comparisons end. Minnesota is planning on turning their great divide into a pedestrian mall that is only periodically divided by a train. Madison — well, Madison is just gonna pour some new concrete and see how things turn out.

It is pretty widely accepted that we have one of the best campuses in the Big Ten. Minnesota is comprised of three separate campuses, Champaign-Urbana is pretty much a truck stop, and Northwestern was alcohol-free until 1975. Nevertheless, our university and our city should not be resting on its laurels. Though we have soaring research towers, beautiful brick buildings, rolling hills and giant lakes, we should be continually trying to improve our campus.

For the most part, we are doing that. Campus plan 2030 will address buildings like Humanities, Noland Hall and Van Hise. The Murray St. Mall will unite the north and south ends of the east side, and a new Union South will anchor the midwestern part of campus and engineering regions. One thing that is not addressed, however, is University. One of the few negative things that struck me as a prospective student back in 2006 was that the campus was divided in two by this pseudo-freeway. Reducing the level of traffic on this street would improve our central campus more than any freshly cured concrete surface could.

Now I hate to say it, but maybe we should follow Minnesota’s lead on this one. A pedestrian mall similar to State Street would be pretty sweet, and if the sushi cart is that much closer to my classes, so much the better. It would also be easy to run any future light rail line (as in Madison’s plan for 2020) through this corridor. Even diverting enough traffic to close one or two lanes and put in a nice green boulevard would bring marked improvement. But since that is a lot of cars to reroute, taking a page out of Boston’s book and going big dig style to build a giant tunnel would probably be the ideal solution.

Now I don’t have all, or any, of the kinks worked out, but at some point University will have to be addressed. As the population of Madison continues to grow, traffic will have to be rerouted or the street expanded. I am suggesting we begin looking into it now. Even in these dire financial times, I’m sure the city and the university can kick together a couple thousand dollars to fund some grad students to do a feasibility study on the situation. After all, they somehow found $300,000 to spend on a feasibility study for a trolley system. It found, as any preschooler could have told you, that while a trolley system has good qualities from a theoretical standpoint, the actual transition from the brio set to the street would be quite complicated.

So here we sit with a pretty nice campus divided by an eyesore of a busy street. And despite all the construction scheduled to take place, it doesn’t look like it’s going to change anytime soon. But that’s not even the worst part. The Gophers are 6-1.

Joey Labuz ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in biomedical engineering.