Rice to begin enforcing "No Through Traffic" signs

Many of our neighbors will recall 25 years ago or more when they taught their children to drive, fly kites and model airplanes, and cross Rice's huge western parking lots without passing more than a couple of cars or a rare pedestrian. Back then, only on football Saturdays was this huge expanse filled.

Over the past several decades, Rice has steadily grown as a university. Research programs have grown to national prominence. Faculty, post-docs, support staff and graduate student numbers have modestly but consistently grown. Undergraduate resident students living on campus have increased by many hundreds as new colleges were built. Cultural and civic outreach programs have developed. Continuing Studies course attendance has grown. And the university has responded with new buildings to accommodate this academic maturation. Virtually every new building eliminated a parking lot and filled the lots that remain.

What was once a vast open parking expanse used only during football season is now heavily used every day to accommodate thousands coming to our pedestrian campus. We now have nearly 7,000 faculty, staff and degree-program students on campus. We also average between one thousand and two thousand visitors every day. Beginning around 5 PM, we typically have several thousand more Continuing Studies students arriving. The vast majority of these people park, walk, or catch a shuttle from that once empty expanse west of the campus to locations all over Rice. We now have, throughout the day and evening, upwards of ten thousand people walking across streets and parking lots and virtually everywhere on our campus.

In years past, some of our immediate neighbors used to zip across our parking lot as a convenient path between University and Rice Boulevards. They were few and, since the lot was largely empty, it was not a problem. As Rice matured, however, so did our neighboring institutions. The Texas Medical Center has grown substantially faster, with much greater numbers than Rice. Commercial enterprises and professional offices to the south, west and even the north have also greatly expanded during these years. Today, we are no longer facing a problem of a few neighbors zipping across Rice; 80,000 people now live or work in the immediate area and hundreds and hundreds of them cut across our campus from the north to the Texas Medical Center area during the morning rush hours, and the reverse during the afternoon rush hours. Many don't observe our speed limits, or slow down much at all for the thousands of pedestrians walking from our lots to their classes, offices and labs. At times, more than half the cars entering the campus are using Rice roads as a shortcut.

Rice is a pedestrian campus by plan. We cannot accommodate a continually increasing volume of cross-campus traffic. The situation has grown progressively more dangerous for our pedestrians and vehicles on campus for legitimate purposes, and is disruptive to our own teaching, research, civic, cultural and sport activities. The only way for us to reduce the danger and disruption from the increasing cut-through traffic is to limit such traffic. The only way to enforce such a limit that is to post "No Through Traffic" signs and, as necessary, issue municipal tickets which carry fines payable to the city of Houston. We reluctantly have come to the conclusion that these steps are necessary for the health (both figurative and literal) of the campus and its students, faculty, staff, and visitors, as well as its academic mission.

There does not seem to be a legitimate way for us to triage cross-campus traffic in a way that might mitigate the inconvenience to our oldest and dearest immediate neighbors. We regret that this is one of the realities associated with the success and maturation of institutions located in this part of Houston, and take this opportunity to alert our neighbors to the impending enforcement of no through traffic signs so that you may avoid being among those ticketed.