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Walking Routes Unveiled to Avoid Construction

Duke officials worked to determine new ways to move around West Campus

 

Click map to enlarge

With work continuing on buildings across West Campus, Duke officials released this week a new map of recommended routes to avoid construction areas and congested pedestrian traffic.

With six projects around the main quad underway or expected to begin this year, the hope is that these paths will provide easier access to buildings while minimizing potential pedestrian issues such as loitering, getting stuck behind slow walkers or having to hold doors for an awkward period of time for that person who’s just a little too far away.

Staff will be on-hand through Saturday to distribute printed maps and answer questions about the new system. 

“We’ve printed out 500 of these maps, and that’s just to hand out this week alone,” said Paul Manning, director of Duke’s Office of Project Management. “Once people get the hang of our color-coded system, we expect getting around campus to be much easier.”

All new walking routes will be colored with various shades of blue, from Duke’s royal blue (highly recommended) down to baby blue (avoid at all costs). 

For example, if visitors were to park in the Bryan Center Garage and wanted to get to the Allen Building, they would first want to leave the garage and walk southwest toward the Bryan Center before reaching the ground-level doors for the building. There, they would go upstairs and through the University Store, where they would exit onto The Plaza and take a left toward Page Auditorium before taking another left to go around the back of Duke Chapel, where they’ll see a man in a red baseball cap named Carl. By approaching Carl slowly, he’ll know their final destination, the Allen Building, and ask three riddles. Once the riddles are solved, Carl will direct visitors to a specific, perpendicular intersection of sidewalks outside the Divinity School, where they can find signs to direct them across the quad to the Flowers Building, then walk southwest to the edge of the West Campus Union construction area where they’ll see a flare fired from atop Allen Building, leading to the final destination. 

“We’ve put a lot of thought into this,” Manning said.

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April Fool’s!

Duke doesn’t have any new suggestions for how to get around campus, but you can use the campus map to learn about what construction projects are taking place.