The University of Southern Maine is planning on eliminating Bedford Street in order to create more parking garages, while it also intends to build student housing where its student center now exists.
What that means is that the 11,000 cars that now use Bedford Street every day to get from the highway or Forest Avenue to Brighton Avenue will then have to use Falmouth Street, half of which is residential. I see a nightmare in the making.
Students complain that walking from the current parking garage to classes is too far to walk. (A block is too long for students, apparently.)
They also want on-campus housing. I sympathize with this, but putting a dorm smack in the middle of the campus will mean that the homes on Falmouth Street will have their only view of the morning sun blocked.
It would make more sense for the university to buy one of the many unused or underused buildings on Forest Avenue and transform them into dorms and have a shuttle bus.
Elizabeth Burke
Portland
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