Author: Arielle Darr
Many colleges and universities throughout the United States are making it easier for students to get around campus and go green by establishing free bike programs. Schools like the University of New England in Maine and Ripon College in Wisconsin are giving complimentary bikes to freshmen that leave their cars at home. Some schools are creating free bike sharing or rental programs that allow multiple students to rent bikes and return them at different locations around campus. Other schools are partnering with bike stores to supply students with bikes at discounted rates.
A recent article that focused on the increasingly popular bike movement on college campuses titled “With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus,” was featured in the New York Times on Oct. 19. In the article, Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, a non-profit organization composed of colleges and universities, was quoted as saying, “We’re seeing an explosion in bike activity; it seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”
While numerous bike programs have been successfully implemented, there have been issues with theft and vandalism that have forced the termination of some of these programs. Despite these setbacks, many schools are choosing to start up similar programs of their own.
Schools nationwide are launching such programs in an effort to combat many of the problems both schools and students are facing. Their primary goal is to reduce the amount of cars on campus because, for some schools, finding space and money for parking is becoming increasingly difficult. In addition, a school always clogged with cars and traffic is unappealing. There are also other positive benefits that bike programs promote including environmental and economic advantages, as well as a greater sense of community that comes with walking or biking on campus.
As more bike sharing and rental plans are initiated throughout college campuses nationwide, students wonder what Oxy is doing to keep up with this trend. Oxy’s location sets it apart form many other schools since its proximity to a car dependent city like Los Angeles makes it impossible to completely eliminate car culture. However, according to the Urban and Environmental Planning Institute, “In the past few years, Los Angeles has seen tremendous growth and energy in its emerging bike movement [. . .] This grassroots development has been exciting and invigorating, scaling up opportunities for both bike advocacy and new policy developments, and, perhaps most importantly, expanding the number of people choosing to bicycle in the region.”
Oxy is also unique in that it is has a small population of students, but is large in terms of campus area. Therefore, parking spaces are plentiful and there is rarely much traffic on campus.
Although Oxy does not necessarily need a bike program to ease the parking shortage like many other schools do, the positives that come with such programs have led many efforts to increase bike culture at Oxy. The obvious environmental benefits of reducing car use among Oxy students in addition to all the money students would save by using this alternate mode of transportation are both appealing motivations. Oxy’s campus is big enough that biking instead of walking could make traveling between classes more convenient and the surrounding Eagle Rock area more accessible. Also the increased community feel as well as health benefits that come with this biking are favorable.
Oxy’s Urban and Environmental Planning (UEP) major and institute continues to address many of the issues that bike programs help to combat. The UEPI Web site says that “bike riding, as a form of transportation, physical activity, cultural and social activity and leisure time recreation, has moved beyond the margin and is an important visible solution to many urban issues from global warming to lack of physical activity.”
Currently there are very few students who bike regularly as a mode of transportation; however, there is a cycling team that began racing competitively this year. “I do own my own bike on campus and don’t use it as much as I would like [. . .] I use it at least once or twice a week and my friends use it too,” Eleanor Haywood (first-year), a bike owner on campus and member of the Oxy Cycling Team said.
While a bike program has yet to be implemented at Oxy, in recent years there have been discussions about starting up a program. At an ASOC General Assembly forum held on November 16, 2005, the idea of making Oxy a more bike friendly campus was presented by Jessica Jew ’06. Jew created a plan that would cost Oxy $50,000 to implement and maintain a student bike rental program.
Such a program would “make Oxy a more bike friendly campus and reduce car traffic. It also encourages students to bike around campus and LA,” Jew said, according to the forum minutes.
Jew also talked about making maps and information on popular locations accessible online and implementing additional programs like renting a bike for all four years, getting new bike racks and starting a bike shop on campus. Members of the General Assembly asked about safety and vandalism issues.
When asked how the plan would be implemented on campus, Jew said that “first the bike racks would be put into place, then slowly the entire program.” Three years later, this initiative has yet to be carried out, although there are people on campus working to change that.
Oxy Professor of Urban Environmental Studies and Director of the UEP Institute Robert Gottlieb said, “There are [. . .] more and more programs along these lines but not yet at Oxy. I think there is likely to be some initial efforts to set up far more bike racks on campus as a first step to make the campus more bike friendly and obviously more could be done, including a bike-sharing initiative. This is also a subject likely to be discussed by the new group overseeing the student Sustainability Fund.”
In addition Gottlieb said that UEPI is planning on hosting, with other bike organizations, a Bike Summit on March 7 at Trade Tech, a Los Angeles College for vocational training. These efforts will continue to drive the emerging interest in bikes on Oxy’s campus.
For more information about the summit visit http://www.labikesummit.org.
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