Purple Line creates accessibility issues for students
UMD campus construction creating the need for awkward detours (Jon Dennis/ The Black Explosion).
Students at the University of Maryland say they are “fed up” with the increased construction on campus – especially the Purple Line, which has made it tougher for them to simply move around.
The Purple Line will be the newest addition to the Metrorail System. It will be an above ground railway that will extend from New Carrollton in Prince George’s County to Silver Spring and Bethesda in Montgomery County. This 16.2 mile long light-rail will connect a total of 21 stations, with five of them located on or around campus, according to purplelinemd.com.
Students around campus summed up their biggest issue with the project in one word: “construction.”
The Purple Line is responsible for the majority of construction on Campus Drive, a road splitting the center of campus. The road is currently being reconfigured, making it difficult for students to get to class.
“The biggest issue on campus is all the construction in general,” said Nicolas Quintana, a senior journalism major. “Between the Purple Line, the new sports complexes and maintaining Route One, it's nearly impossible to navigate through and around campus.”
Accessibility can be even more challenging for students with disabilities.
“I’m on crutches right now, and I have never struggled so much to walk across campus as I have in the past four weeks,” said Jahnavi Kirkire, a junior government and politics major.
Both Kirkire and Quintana agree upon the lack of accessibility and that students are being considered as an afterthought when the university begins new construction projects.
“The only real fix for the issue, unfortunately, is for them to finish the construction, but College Park has a historically bad track record of finishing construction on time,” said Quintana.
Construction also took a toll on campus organizations like the Student Entertainment Events. SEE’s Public Relations Director Elise Bailey said that the construction on campus has “forced us to rethink the accessibility of our events.”
“Navigating the campus and even parking for our events has been complicated, we need to communicate effectively to make sure the public knows how to get to the event location,” said Bailey.
With construction of the Purple Line beginning in 2017 and facing numerous delays throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the project has now been rescheduled to begin carrying passengers in the spring of 2027, according to the Maryland Department of Transportation.
Despite the delay, the Purple Line has made notable progress as of recently, according to the Purple Line Communications Director Kathryn Lamb. Lamb noted that Purple Line crews worked with UMD officials to speed up construction of the light rail system.
“During recent Community Advisory Team meetings, the Purple Line announced that the project is more than 58% complete, with 98% of utility work done across the system,” said Lamb.
The University of Maryland’s administration also ensured that all pedestrian detours on campus will be ADA accessible, during a forum in April of this year.
“We worked very hard to make sure that all of the detours are ADA accessible,” said Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Carlo Colella.
Administration urges anyone with a permanent or temporary disability to contact purpleline@umd.edu if the purple line construction presents a barrier to your accessibility.
“If you were to learn that something is not how it should be, let us know and we’ll get on that right away,” said Colella.
However, Kirkire wants to take a more aggressive approach to the accessibility issue on campus by directly taking it up with Pines administration.
“I think we need to have a conversation with the administration,” Kirkire said. “I think we need to start being very aware of construction and how that impacts students who are not able to walk across campus without concessions or ADA.”