and they call this an institution of higher learning

Larry Lebowitz, who has the distinction of writing on the most boring subject on earth--traffic--has a piece in today's Herald on Florida International University's refusal, after many years of planning, to allow a Metrorail station on its campus.

The powers that be at FIU don't want Metrorail to stop anywhere on the main campus.

Transit had been planning for several years to build its end-of-the-line station on a wedge of FIU land located just east of Florida's Turnpike and Southwest 117th Avenue near the National Hurricane Center.

Now Transit is considering a new site about seven-tenths of a mile farther south, on county-owned land at Tamiami Regional Park.

No one intimately involved with FIU's master-planning, or the campus' recent negotiations with Transit, would speak for the record, leaving spokeswoman Maydel Santana-Bravo to explain the university's rationale.

FIU supports building an off-campus Metrorail station at the park because it ''wouldn't take up precious campus real estate,'' Santana-Bravo said.

For those unfamiliar with Miami, FIU is on the Western part of Miami-Dade County, a part of the county historically disconnected--not only geographically, but also culturally--from the east side of the county, where Miami proper and Miami Beach are. The extension of the Metrorail would essentially put that hinterland within a 20-minute train ride from the hub of the county, and the airport. It should reduce traffic dramatically. During rush hour, it takes about 2 hours to make it through a 10-mile stretch of highway. It only makes sense for the geniuses at FIU to try to screw all that up.

Cross posted from TDU.