Getting around campus  has become much easier for students and staff at the University of Richmond.

In September, 35 green bikes were placed around campus for students to ride to class, the library, residence halls, or other destinations.

Students can pick up and leave the bikes at racks placed throughout the campus.

The bike program was the idea of students in the campus Sierra Club and RENEW (Richmond Environmental Network for Economic Willpower), which have merged to form Green UR. The group has been working with campus Recreation and Wellness to implement the bike program.

“The Richmond campus is very bikeable, and we just wanted to see more students out there on bikes, both for exercise and for the environment,” says Karen DeBonis, a member of Green UR.

“The bikes reduce traffic and minimize the University’s carbon footprint,” says Tom Roberts, director of recreation and wellness, “The program also supports the goals of the nationwide (college) Presidents’ Climate Commitment and encourages everyone in our campus community to live healthy, balanced lives.”

14 new, yellow bikes have been purchased to supplement the original 35 placed in service in the fall.

How is the program working?

“There used to be people who would make fun of the program, or be like, ‘Stupid green bike,’ and kick it, but now people are like, ‘Sweet, green bike,’ and jump on. It’s been great to see that happening over time,” said  sophomore Jerry Giordano, president of GreenUR, “It’s clear to anyone that has set foot outside campus in the last two weeks that the bikes have been generally well received. Every day I see members of the university community enjoying and taking advantage of the green bikes.”

According to bike mechanic Daniel Kinka, there have been some initial glitches and bikes were being treated roughly.  But things seem to be  going better.  Kinka said there hadn’t been any major damages to bikes so far this semester.  “The damages are all very minor, and only constitute 10 to 15 minute repairs on average,” he said, “However, what’s unsettling is the obvious fact that much of the damage is intentional, or at the very least, the result of flagrant neglect.”

In addition to Kinka, the university will be hiring one or two student mechanics from GreenUR, Giordano said. “Many students don’t know this, but they can take their own bikes and get free maintenance,” he added.

“Next year is the first year the bike program will be in full swing, with the maintenance shop, the store, the bike sale and the whole inventory,” Giordano said, “If the bike programs become popular enough, and this becomes more of a bike-oriented campus, we’re hoping especially the freshmen will catch on and maybe we can get more funding and nicer bikes.”

The much-ballyhooed Bikestation DC opens tomorrow, Friday October 2, with a grand opening and ribbon cutting ceremony at 10:30am, in conjunction with the League of American Bicyclists. (Please RSVP to Steve Mathis at ((877) 572-2453.) Bikestation DC is at 50 Massachusetts Ave., appropriately at Union Station.

The concept, location, and design of Bikestation DC have generated a lot of discussion and press attention. Examiner.com has a great page of links to media highlights. This is a great addition to our nation’s capital — for the city itself, and as a nationwide example of how things can be done. Bikestation has been operating successfully in other cities for over a decade.

We’re not in the business of promoting “stuff,” but anything that removes barriers to bicycling like this does is well worth mentioning. DaHon’s new Pango helmet folds to half the volume of a typical bike helmet, to stow easily inside a messenger bag, backpack, pannier, or briefcase. The “what do I do with my helmet” question has now been answered, for many people at least. No word yet on safety ratings, availability, or price.

DaHon’s folding bicycles are well worth looking at too.

As the Washington Post reports, Washington DC’s bike sharing program is open for business today. SmartBike DC will provide 120 bikes at 10 self-service racks in various locations downtown. A $40 annual membership fee allows cyclists to take a bike from any of the racks and return it to any other, with no limit on the number of trips. City officials hope the program will replace cab rides and public transit trips for many people, as similar programs have done in cities such as Paris and Barcelona.

NBC’s Today Show this morning ran a full 3 minute segment about an increase in bike commuting due to high gas prices. Reporter Kerry Sanders rides with commuters on the 37 mile Pinellas Trail in Dunedin, FL. Also featured are commuters in Coral Gables and West Palm Beach, FL, and Boulder, CO. Some topics covered were:

• Bikes on transit buses and trains — 10% of all transit riders in Portland, OR bring bikes, and bikes on transit has increased 30% in Houston, TX
• Companies paying employees to commute by bike
• Companies providing locker rooms and showers for bike commuters
• Biking is faster than driving or transit in urban areas
• Police depts. turning to bikes vs. patrol cars

Headline News also ran a bike story today, about a man in Tehachapi, CA commuting over 40 miles each way, and saving $400/month on gas.

With bicycling getting attention from mainstream media, the time is ripe for bike advocates to deliver our message. Let’s get busy.

This article originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

By MICHAEL PAUL WILLIAMS
TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST

Each morning, Sam Perry dons a helmet, hops on his bicycle and pedals 4 miles from his home to his job at a software company near Broad Street and Parham road.

“It is an effort on my part to find a safe route,” said Perry, who has been commuting to work by bicycle for eight years, riding as far as 27 miles.

“Part of it is my own health initiative,” he said, “and part of it is having one less car on the road.”

With motor vehicles polluting, the planet warming and the price of gas approaching $4 a gallon, wouldn’t we all benefit from fewer cars on the road?

“Unfortunately, it takes a price like we’re seeing today to lead people to seek alternative transportation,” said Perry’s wife, Kimberly Perry, executive director of the Lakeside-based BikeWalk Virginia.

The Perrys were among some 60 cyclists who gathered yesterday at the State Capitol Bell Tower to commemorate May’s National Bike Month.

Ralph M. Davis, Virginia’s deputy secretary of transportation, arrived on his Fuji road bike and read a proclamation recognizing the historic importance of bicycles in Virginia “for transportation, recreation,
fitness and fun.”

Soaring gas prices have schools, governments, businesses and consumers crying for help, with no rescue in sight.

“The expectation is with higher gas prices, people will be using other forms of transportation, with bicycling being one of those,” Davis said.

“I don’t know that anyone knows what’s going to happen with gasoline prices.”

What will it take to significantly lower gas prices?

“Low crude oil prices will lead to lower gas prices. But this is the wrong question,” said Gilbert E. Metcalf, a professor of economics at Tufts University.

“The right question is: What will it take to protect consumers against high gas prices? The answer is to lower our oil consumption. The way to do that is to raise gas prices, not lower them.”

That’s not what you want to hear, but the choice is clear: Remain a slave to petrol’s whims or invest in alternative forms of transportation, including rail, buses and bicycles.

Progressive cities such as Portland, Ore., and Berkeley, Calif., have established “bicycle boulevards” that calm and reduce motor vehicle traffic on designated thoroughfares.

The Virginia Department of Transportation, meanwhile, is working on the “road diet” concept, which would reduce the number of lanes on streets with moderate traffic to provide space for new bicycle lanes.

Jakob Helmboldt, statewide bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for VDOT, says such roads would be re-striped from four lanes to three, including newly installed turn lanes. The turn lanes would allow the streets to handle the same amount of traffic and make them more bicycleand pedestrian-friendly.

A problem: State road fund allocations to urban areas are based on the number of lanes. “We’re looking at what we need to do to accomplish that change so it wouldn’t necessarily penalize the locality,” he said.

Helmboldt spoke on the bicycle boulevards concept as part of the Downtown Master Plan. The concept is challenging, logistically and politically. But he said Richmond, with its dense road grid, is ideal.
“You do have enough carrying capacity on other parallel streets.”

It’s clear we need to switch gears and look beyond the automobile and gas pump for our transportation solutions.

Contact Michael Paul Williams at (804) 649-6815 or mwilliams@timesdispatch.com.

Soon (or perhaps already), Washington DC will have its own Euro-style bike sharing program, the first of its kind in the US. SmartBike DC will provide racks of bikes, conveniently located throughout the city. Cyclists will be able to rent bikes for one-way trips by taking them from one rack and leaving them at another. The rental process is completely automated, with an electronic card-swipe system. Similar systems have been operating for awhile in European cities such as Paris and Barcelona.

Originally scheduled for an early spring launch, SmartBike DC has received a lot of press already, including feature articles in the New York Times and Washington Post.

Though on a smaller scale and not automated, ShareBike in Roanoke provides a similar service, with downtown locations convenient to the Hotel Roanoke and Roanoke River Greenway.

For ongoing information about bike sharing programs, see the Bike-Sharing Blog by MetroBike LLC.

In case you haven’t come across it yet, there’s a petition going around to get Google to add a “bike there” feature to Google Maps. For a few locales there’s a “take public transit” option, which gives you the exact bus/train routes, transfers, and times to get to your destination. Similarly, the “bike there” option could be offered to give you the preferred route for biking, and estimated travel time. It’s rumored that Google is planning this anyway. It’s certainly possible, as demonstrated by third party bike map websites.

The main holdup is collecting the data and making the databases available. Only a few transit authorities have done this, which is why the “take public transit” option is only available for a few places.

Obviously people are working on the bike data though. The more data we can get into the system, the sooner we’ll have these tools. The only project I’m aware of in Virginia is Ride Solutions, a joint effort of the Roanoke and New River Valley MPOs. Let us know if you’re aware of any others. I can’t imagine there’s not someone working on this in NoVA/DC.

Anyway, check out the Google Maps Bike There website, which has a bunch of other neat stuff, as well as a link to sign the petition.

Perhaps the greatest benefit to this project would be having “bike there” presented and legitimized as a transportation option, for the hundreds of millions of people who use Google every day. Now that’s promoting bicycling!