Students and officials remain largely unconvinced of the campus’s bike-friendliness, even after the League of American Bicyclists awarded this university with a bronze prize for being one of the most bike-friendly campuses in the country.
The award, which was given out as a part of the Bicycle Friendly University program’s first year, was the only honor given to an ACC and Mid-Atlantic institution. It places this campus in the top 20 of 32 applicants — an accolade officials have pointed to as a sign that conditions for cyclists on the campus are improving.
“Winning this award puts us in a league with universities known nationwide for bike accommodations,” DOTS Assistant Director Beverly Malone said.
But students who traverse the campus daily said the university is no where near as bike-friendly as the award suggests.
Junior mechanical engineering major Adam Davis said the campus infrastructure should be updated to better accommodate bikers, citing a need for more bike ramps that allow cyclists to easily ride from the road to the sidewalk.
DOTS officials are doing their best with what they have to work with, Malone said, noting the department continually seeks to add more storage and parking areas for bikes.
“We have a real conflict with the built environment,” Malone said. “A lot of the schools in California have environments that perfectly fit the needs of bicyclists. But here, the roads are narrow, they curve, there are limitations. But I’m hoping people take [receiving the award] as a chance to improve.”
According to the league’s website, campuses were judged in five categories: engineering, education, encouragement, enforcement and evaluation. The bronze level indicates the university is committed to promoting bicycling and is usually strong in two of the five categories. Seven other campuses received the bronze award, while 12 were ranked higher, receiving either platinum (Stanford University), gold or silver awards.
Freshman letters and sciences major Ryan Delaney said the campus is as welcoming to bikers as it can be.
“I guess it would help if they had a bike lane [on the road], but I don’t know if there’d be enough room for that,” he said.
Some students said an even greater problem is the behavior of drivers on the campus. Last semester, several small accidents occurred when cyclists and scooter riders were struck by vehicles in parking lots.
Junior mechanical engineering major Bracha Mandel said she has noticed a problem with the way bikers are treated.
“I think a big issue is that cars don’t deem bikes as important on the road,” Mandel said.
DOTS officials said they are hopeful strides will be made in the near future: Facilities Management is updating the university’s Facilities Master Plan, a blueprint of the campus’s development in future years, to include a section entirely on biking.
At a bike forum held Monday night, DOTS Director David Allen gave a presentation on what the future holds for bikers on the campus. The master plan acknowledges shortages in non-vehicular traffic areas, and several improvements are under consideration, including the additions of bike-only lanes, cross-campus bike-only paths, designated “shared use” paths for both bikers and pedestrians and more road signs alerting drivers to the use of certain roads by both bikers and cars.
“The Facilities Master Plan has moved biking forward drastically,” Allen said. “But we still have a long way to go.”
israel at umdbk dot com
