Bike-friendly campus a must for UK

In light of the results of the bike study conducted on Tuesday, members of the university have to conclude that bike transportation is headed in a positive direction. The study indicated that bike use has increased by 37 percent, despite only a 9 percent enrollment increase, a hefty hike that could have resulted from a number of factors.

Primarily, high gas prices and students’ general proximity to campus make biking to class a more attractive option. Secondly, the fairly recent addition of bike lanes along Avenue of Champions/Euclid Avenue and Rose Street has made it safer to travel along the outer edge of part of the campus. Thirdly, UK’s nationally recognized free bike rental program and maintenance shop, Wildcat Wheels, makes it possible for a greater number of people to use bikes, even when they cannot afford to buy or maintain one.

The increase in the number of cyclists is a positive statistic for students. Biking offers a range of benefits. It helps reduce carbon emissions on and around campus. It saves students money, which is already in short supply due the economy, because they use less gas. And it gives them all of the physical benefits of daily exercise, all while reducing their commuting time.

While the addition of bike lanes on Euclid Avenue and Rose Street seems to have been a positive step for UK, there is much more that the university could be doing to increase bike use on and around campus. If more people begin riding their bikes to school, there should be more parking spaces.

Many students live too far away from campus to safely commute by bike to class every day. UK should use whatever influence it can to encourage the city of Lexington to add bike lanes along busy routes like Nicholasville, Harrodsburg, and Versailles roads.

UK needs to look into student incentives to avoid buying parking passes either by raising pass prices or offering some sort of reward for not purchasing a pass. They may be doing a good job here, because the price for parking passes seems to go up every year.

Finally, the university should make it a priority to supplement Wildcat Wheels’ funding and to establish a single, reliable stream of income for the program. Doing so would allow them to expand and serve more university members by purchasing and/or maintaining a larger fleet of bikes, and by extending the hours during which the maintenance shop stays open.

Overall, the bike study results were overwhelmingly positive, and it’s a commendable effort by the study’s surveyors. In order to bring positive change to campus, it is important to regularly collect accurate information, and to track any trends over time, so that we have a repository of useful data that will help us make the best-informed decisions for campus initiatives. This is a great step in that direction.