51 New and Renewing Bicycle Friendly Universities Announced!

Northwest U BFU press-release-11-2016
Northwestern Univ. in Evanston, IL, was one of the new BFUs this round.

Fantastic news to see so many of our members getting national recognition for their hard work making their campuses more bike friendly!  164 universities are recognized now!?  Wow!

Here’s an excerpt from the League of American Bicyclists’ press release on Nov. 28, 2016:

“Today, the League of American Bicyclists announced 51 new and renewing Bicycle Friendly Universities℠  (BFUs)  from 25 states, There are now 164 BFUs in 44 states and Washington, DC, a cutting-edge group of colleges and universities across the United States transforming their campuses and the communities around them.”

Read the full article here.

MSU Hosts First Bike Friendly America Conference

The Tour de MSU group poses
The Tour de MSU group poses in front of MSU’s mascot Sparty statue.

As members of the MSU’s Bike Advisory Committee analyzed what made the country’s five platinum-level Bike Friendly Universities so successful it became apparent that MSU needed to get their neighboring communities on board with the same vision to pursue becoming a platinum-level Bike Friendly Community.  This led to reaching out to the League of American Bicyclists and deciding to bring one of their staff to the university to meet with the committee and facilitate meetings with neighboring community leaders.

Steve Sanders, Alternative Transportation Manager of U of MN
Steve Sanders, Alternative Transportation Manager of U of MN, presented the UMN story.

As the cost estimates climbed the idea of turning the visit into a day conference started to come together.  Eventually a new concept for a conference, a Bike Friendly America Conference, was hatched and after months of planning and seeking out sponsors, presenters and attendees the 1st ever conference of its type is now history.

The MSU team is now beginning to think about next year and whether to continue the conference on its campus or to encourage other universities to host it.  Please contact Tim Potter if you’re interested in possibly hosting the event in 2017.

A wrap-up article featuring photos and video highlights can be seen here on the MSU Bikes’ blog.

1st Univ. Bike Program Session @ Natl. Bike Summit 2016

About twenty of us (including a couple vendors) had a great session at the National Bike Summit this March 2016 thanks to Amelia Neptune, the League of American Bicyclists’ Program Manager for their Bicycle Friendly Business & University programs.  Aaron Goldbeck gave one formal presentation on some upcoming new bike programs at the Univ. of Maryland nearby the conference.

Hoping next year’s NBS meeting will be bigger and better!  Amelia is excited about the potential.

Bicycle Friendly University Program Graduates to New Heights

BFU logoIt’s an exciting morning for 49 universities and colleges around the country who are new and renewing Bicycle Friendly Universities.  This new list of BFUs represents a tremendous amount of work by hundreds if not thousands of people in these universities not to mention the monetary investments too in the effort to make campuses more bike friendly and educate the next generation on safe bicycling habits.

Read the League’s full press release here.

Keep up the great work everyone!

Stanford Main Quad

 

Survey of Valet Bike Parking for large campus events

Volunteer staff at MSU's VBP service.
MSU offered VBP services for a large event during late summer 2015 parking over 100 bikes out of 5,000 attendees. A combination of existing parking and temporary event parking eqpt. was used.

A survey was conducted by Tim Potter in early September 2015 to find out if and how universities are providing valet bike parking services for large events.

The survey itself is still open and is still accepting responses if you missed it earlier. Go here to participate.

Here are the live results.

Community VBP services for a large music festival
Scene during a large community music festival (E. Lansing, MI, summer 2015)

PBIC webinar “Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety on University Campuses”

Screenshot from webinar
Screenshot from webinar

Six of our MSU Bike Advisory Committee sat in on an excellent webinar titled “Pedestrian and Bicycle Safety on University Campuses”on October 16, 2015.  It was hosted by the Pedestrian and Bicycle Information Center (which is housed within the University of North Carolina Highway Safety Research Center) an excellent resource for all kinds of materials to help us make our campuses more bike friendly.

You can see the archived version here (both the Powerpoint and the audio recording):  http://www.pedbikeinfo.org/training/webinars_PBIC_LC_101615.cfm

Excellent examples from 3 universities (U of WI-Milwaukee,  UC- Berkeley, NCSU) that are doing some great work to make their campuses safer for everyone moving around.

Webinar report: State of Bike Share Technology for universities

smart-bike-lock We had 55 people (including the 5 presenters) on our first webinar on Wednesday!  A smashing success.  The technology worked and we covered everything we intended to within the alloted time.  We hope that it was helpful for those of our members who are in the middle of considering the different options in starting up a bike “sharing” system or service.

Here are some links to the presentations:

Grace Kyung (formerly of Univ of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana: Presentation  (Powerpoint)

Jessica Zdeb of Toole Design Group) : Presentation (PDF)

Tim Potter, MSU Bikes:  Presentation (Word file)

Russell Meddin, the man behind the The Bike-sharing World Map, Bike Share Philadelphia and The Bike-sharing Blog:  Presentation Part 1 – Part 2 (PDFs)

Kurt Wallace Martin of Bikes Make Life Better: Presentation (Prezi)

Upcoming webinar: State of Bike Share Technology for universities

Generic bike share icon

Join us for our first network member webinar on June 16, 3:00 – 4:30 pm (EDT)!

Registration is now open here:  https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/regist…/5134361227908182274

This is a free webinar for network members only that will provide an overview of bike sharing, the current state of university campus bike share, new smart lock technologies, and bike share feasibility analysis.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

We’ll be learning about the bike share tech. survey results from Grace Kyung (formerly of Univ of Illinois – Champaign-Urbana), hear from some industry consultants (Kurt Wallace Martin of Bikes Make Life Better and Jessica Zdeb of Toole Design Group) working w/ existing and up and coming bike share technology of various types as well as have input from industry expert Russell Meddin, the man behind the The Bike-sharing World Map, Bike Share Philadelphia and The Bike-sharing Blog.

This webinar will not be a sales pitch for products/ services, but an informational session to help our members best understand the current and coming technologies and how/if they might assist our schools expand bicycle use on our campuses.  Note: Toole Design Group is providing the webinar infrastructure for this presentation, but note that your email address (required for registration) will not be used for any marketing purposes by Toole Design Group.

It will be recorded and archived for future reference for those who can’t “attend”.

 

Natl Bike Summit 2015 Get Together

A group of our fellow campus bike programmers got together during the National Bike Summit to share stories and food/ drink.

Michael Gorman, of Bloomington, Illinois, posted the following w/ this photo to our Facebook group:

“It was great meeting everyone! — with Jacob DeGeal, Grace Kyung, Matthew McCluney, Steve Sanders, Tim Ledlie, Amelia Neptune and Karen Brooks, Carnegie Mellon University at City Tap House DC.”

Campus bike programmers' get together in Washington, DC during the Natl. Bike Summit 2015.
Campus bike programmers’ get together in Washington, DC during the Natl. Bike Summit 2015.

$1 to Save Bicycling on Campus at Univ. Ill – Urbana-Champaign

Grace Kyung - Univ. of Ill - Urbana-Champaign
Grace Kyung – Univ. of Ill – Urbana-Champaign posing in front of a bike polo match.

Nice article about one of our newer members, Grace Kyung from Univ. Illinois Urbana-Champaign and her efforts to get stable funding for their bike program:
Congrats to Grace for her efforts there and inspiration for what can be done with enough hard work!

http://cleantechnica.com/2015/02/23/1-save-bicycling-campus-university-illinois-urbana-champaign/

Member Amelia Neptune, of the League of American Bicyclists notes “This story originated on the League of American Bicyclists’ blog: http://bikeleague.org/content/big-idea-1-save-bicycling-campus because Grace will be presenting on this topic at the National Bike Summit in March.”