It’s a Sunday afternoon. You just got off work and are on your way back to campus just in time for your 4:30 p.m. Onward State staff meeting. All is going great, until, with the Carnegie Building in sight, you have to cross Pollock Road, and a driver with a certain black and light yellow license plate decides to roll through the stop sign. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to say “I’m walkin’ ‘ere!” has finally presented itself.

Then you think, “Why haven’t they banned cars from this road yet?”

It’s a thought I’ve had before, but it’s always something that seemed just too impractical for me to bring to reality. Pollock Road is a major artery for several important buildings it happens to snake through. The HUB, Old Main, the various engineering labs, and West Halls are all important buildings that need Pollock Road for their deliveries and for university staff members who work in these locations.

On the other side of the coin, Pollock Road is also a major artery for students and is central to Penn State’s campus. Any Penn State student could tell you to stay clear of the area with your car because you won’t be getting anywhere. Foot traffic from the HUB, students traveling from north campus, the library, and folks headed from downtown all funnel to the sidewalks of Pollock Road. Watching students on bikes or electric scooters trying to weave their way through the massive crowds is nail-biting enough, let alone a driver behind the wheel of the car.

It’s not her fault that a sprawling, land-grant university has grown on the heels of her sidewalks. Pollock Road wasn’t designed for the largest university in the Commonwealth by enrollment.

This is why, it would seem, the university has quietly acknowledged that through traffic on Pollock Road should be eliminated. A sign placed at the end of the street, closest to Shortlidge Road, and also conveniently placed for drivers who still have an opportunity to turn around before it’s too late, instructs folks that drop-offs are not to occur beyond a certain point on the street. If you venture further down Pollock Road, additional signs warning of road closures, prohibited through traffic, and even a parking garage-style automatic gate are present to deter any potential drivers looking for a quick way to cut across campus.

Unfortunately, though, the signs and gates are just a falsehood. The barriers are almost always left open, and despite the specific instruction from signs, the gates are not in fact closed, and drivers can proceed to cut through one of the most congested parts of campus— which is why you’re able to be cut off by a driver from the Garden State on your way to a meeting in the Carnegie Building.

It’s a no-brainer to me that consistent vehicular traffic should not be allowed to cross through the busiest, most congested area of Penn State’s campus. If you leave a fire unattended, you’re bound to burn the house down. Through traffic shouldn’t be any different.

Cars should be diverted away from central campus toward College Avenue and Beaver Avenue, respectively, to make their turns back to campus without cutting through where students are walking.

I’m not proposing a radical, overnight revolution, either. The obvious solution is to completely pedestrianize Pollock Road. Make one big, long, beautiful pedestrian walkway for folks to still just barely make it to their class in the Keller Building or Westgate in time with plenty of space for students to walk without the hassle of cars.

Such things, though, were not meant for this imperfect world we live in. The immediate problem with this solution is clear: deliveries, service vehicles, and university staff still need easy access to these buildings. A completely pedestrianized Pollock Road would pose challenges for university employees whose job it is to provide services to the students and the State College community who depend on the buildings the road serves.

On the other hand, I don’t think we have to look very hard to find a potential solution.

Shortlidge Road was revitalized as a “pedestrian mall” on Penn State’s campus in the early 2000s as part of its Campus Master Plan. It, much like Pollock Road is today, was a major thoroughfare for vehicles that were also plagued with consistent traffic issues. It wasn’t too long ago that Shortlidge, much like its perpendicular bigger brother, was carrying great amounts of traffic to the two arteries that box in Penn State’s main campus: Park Avenue and College Avenue.

So, that’s the argument. Penn State should give Pollock Road the Shortlidge treatment. It should also quit beating around the bush with its half-implemented road closures and HUB Deck-style nightmare-inspiring barrier gates that always seem to be suspiciously open.

A non-contiguous Pollock Road would solve these problems. Necessary university traffic, deliveries, and the staffers who work in the halls of Old Main could still have access to their offices. Traffic from the opposite direction could also still drive to the Willard Building or West Halls without interruptions, just, this time, students walking through these areas wouldn’t have to deal with the dangers posed by folks looking to quickly cut through campus. Drivers would be relegated to the nearby College Avenue or Curtin Road, which is a story for another time.

To the folks at Old Main: do the students who pay you thousands of dollars a year a favor and keep them safe while they’re traveling through the busiest, most central part of your campus. After all, students who are hit by drivers who should’ve been paying more attention can’t spend their money on textbooks their professors wrote and upgrading their meal plan level.

So, Penn State, pedestrianize Pollock Road.