Oct 9th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Peddling on Campus
CAP takes a look at efforts to encourage bicycle use on college campus. Colleges and college towns are really places that should be looking especially hard at alternatives to driving. For one thing, college students generally don’t have children and families which makes it a lot easier to go car-free. And then by the same token college students have a tendency to get drunk which doesn’t mix very well with driving. And then, last, college administrations have a lot of ability to shape the choices their students make — especially when they can work in partnership with local government officials.
35 Responses to “Peddling on Campus”
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October 9th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
And then by the same token college students have a tendency to get drunk which doesn’t mix very well with driving.
It doesn’t mix very well with riding a bicycle either.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Live in a dorm or near campus, just walk and be safer.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
Mostly right, but I was sorry to see the tacit encouragement of drunk biking. It might be somewhat safer than drunk driving in that you’re going slower (I conjecture – I don’t have figures), but it doesn’t seem like something that people should be doing when it can be avoided, particularly since most biking around a college would be on city streets. Add in the fact that most drunk biking would be at night.
October 9th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
So, was Matt trying to make some sort of pun about “peddling” the concept of bicycling on campus, or was he just misspelling “pedaling?” Anybody want to place bets?
October 9th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
“Peddling” On Campus?? Try “Pedaling.”
October 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
As a Dickinson alum, I can tell you that the campus is small enough that not even a bicycle is required to get around adequately.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
I agree totally that bikes and colleges definitely…youth/hipster culture has been embracing the bicycle for awhile now anyway.
Another couple pluses to consider is the fact that traffic tends to be really bad in college towns at certain times of the day (according to class schedules) and parking is pretty much a nightmare at every college I know.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:06 pm
Is “Drunken Biking” really a huge problem? Drunken Walking Down Staircases is hazardous, too, should we launch a campaign against that?
October 9th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
FYI.
In Ohio the penalty for bicycling with a blood alcohol content of .08 is the same as operating a motor vehicle.
Not saying it should be legal but it certainly should not be the same penalty.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
I don’t what new spelling rules you’re try to sell, Matt, but it looks like the folks around here aren’t buying.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Speaking as a UC Davis alum (’79), where bicycles have been primary transportation for decades, I find it difficult not to say “told ya so!” So, what the heck. I’ll say it.
Told ya’ so!
October 9th, 2008 at 3:15 pm
Oh, please. Drunk biking is no big deal. It’s ridiculous that it’s considered on par with drunk driving in a legal sense, in many states. If you bicycle drunk, who are you going to hurt? Yourself. Or you might cause a bike accident. Those aren’t exactly fatal.
I really don’t see why biking on college campuses needs to be encouraged. Every campus I’ve been to is lousy with bicycles.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Re: Drunk Biking
I also don’t think it’s a huge public safety concern, but considering that they’re usually on roads, I can see it as a hazard to drivers. But that still leaves the fact that it’s illegal, classified as a DUI in most places. I know for sure that it is here in Colorado.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Drunken biking can land you in the hospital. I’m not saying its equal to drunk driving (clearly not) but you can mess yourself up pretty badly, and be a traffic hazard.
If you’re going to get drunk, find a ride or walk it off.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Bicycling drunk is illegal in many states, right or not. And the propensity for bikes to get stolen on college campus is incredibly high-it almost encourages people to not even bother considering a biking option.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Va Tech is laid (layed?) out so that bicycling to the campus from out in town is normally the prefered option. (and my experience is from the early nineties) Also, biking was better because commuter parking passes were rather expensive. Plus, the bus was free because the transit company got paid from student fees.
October 9th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
Drunken biking can land you not only in the hospital, but in the grave. Within the last three years two or three bicycling fatalities here in Tucson have been due to bicyclists under the influence.
Of course, several MORE bicycling fatalities have been due to drunken drivers.
And this in a town that usually gets high rankings as a bike-friendly city.
(Also bike ridership here is skyrocketing, if my daily commute is any indication. Not being 90 degrees at 8AM might have somethign to do with it, but the cost of gas is surely a big factor.)
October 9th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Where I went to college, it snows between December and April. And when it snows, your bike rusts, because there’s no room for a bike — let alone room for 2 or 3, one per roommate — in your average concrete cinderblock dorm room.
And yes, the ones outside get stolen. None of us ever considered biking a viable option unless we lived off-campus.
October 9th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Hey! I’m a college student! My undergraduate university, Southwestern University (a small private liberal arts college in Texas), actually provides the campus with bikes. There are 1,400 students and some rich dude recently donated about 90 bikes. We all use them to get around on campus, go where we need to go, and them leave them there for the next person to use. It’s a really great system!
October 9th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
I dunno about Dickinson, but I went to Caltech and the campus there was basically too small for bike use to be really popular. There were a handful of bike riders, but they were generally people who lived several blocks off campus. The vast majority of students lived either on or within easy walking distance of campus and just walked everywhere. A handful of people rollerbladed to class (this was the 1990s) and I remember 2 unicyclists (this was a school full of nerds).
October 9th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
What the h—l, Yglesias? It’s “Pedaling” with an A, not Peddling with a D. Is proper spelling one of those old-fashioned mores that the cosmopolitan globalists are too cool for?
October 9th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Too right
When I moved to Cambridge Ma some time ago it seemed many were bike riding so I joined the flow.
Commuted from there and everywhere for many years.
Then I moved to Florida. They do not do bicycling there!
Quit – too dangerous
Unquestionable there needs to be a criticL mass of bikers to make it work.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Re: CAP takes a look at efforts to encourage bicycle use on college campus.
Unless things have chnaged a lot since the early 90s when I was at the UofM, I don’t think much enouragement is needed: bikes are everywhere on campus already. Given the traffic and parking hassales in Ann Arbor my bike was definitely my preferred means of getting around– except in the dead of winter when snow and ice made the bike too dangerous to use.
Re: It doesn’t mix very well with riding a bicycle either.
Luckily the conservation of angular momentum is not suceptible to alcohol.
Re: Drunken biking can land you not only in the hospital, but in the grave.
Sober biking can do the same. In fact sober driving and even sober walking have that potential.
re: there’s no room for a bike — let alone room for 2 or 3, one per roommate — in your average concrete cinderblock dorm room.
No bike storage rooms in the basement? I recall the UofM having that option in at least a couple of it dorms. (I never lived in a dorm, but I had friends that did)
Re: Then I moved to Florida. They do not do bicycling there!
They do– but mostly only people too poor or with too many DUIs to have a car. And yep, it’s dangerous. I actually biked a lot in St Pete, since the city is laid out in a grid and you can get around by residential streets, but in Fort Lauderdale my bike use was limited to occasional spins around the subdivision. The canals, freeways and railroad tracks leave too much of the city cut off from the rest of it except via the major highways.
October 9th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
ucsb is a campus and community dedicated to biking. there are more bikes than people. It is a great way to get around as long as you can live within a mile of campus. it is generally distance that people live from campus that impact the number of bikes. Our campus has bike highways and roundabouts. i can tell you from personal experience that biking while intoxicated is a really bad idea. interestingly enough despite repeated accidents no one wears a helmet.
October 10th, 2008 at 12:47 am
I also went to VA Tech, though in the late 80s vs the 90s. I strongly preferred to ride my bike to get around. Except for minor police hassle and an incident where the town did a mass bike removal (and lock cut) of all bikes locked to fences, signs and anything not a bike rake (all in one night), it was pretty nice. Blacksburg is pretty easy to get around by bike if you are a student.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:33 am
At the University of Maryland, there were always bikes everywhere when I was a student. I rode to class nearly every day of my four years there. (With the occasional walk mixed in.)
The recipe is simple: Make it really expensive and inconvenient for students to park on campus and they will look for an alternative that doesn’t require gasoline or expensive parking permits. And College Park is an area with a fairly high crime rate and I never got my U-locked bike stolen.
October 10th, 2008 at 11:37 am
When I visited Stanford back in 1998, I was told by the tour guide there that they have more registered bicycles than they do (registered) people.
If you’ve ever seen Stanford’s campus, it has big, wide brick walkways going throughout, it’s very flat, and there aren’t many cars on the central paths. It’s also pretty expansive which makes biking not only the best and easiest option but necessary, too, so there are push and pull factors.
Looking down on the bike lots from the belltower was impressive.
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