As I have already said, $15 won’t hurt us much. It’s the nickel and diming that is the problem. We pay a fee to use the Johnson Center, we pay a fee to take college specific classes, and we are paying a fee to increase the universities budget while only increasing the maximum allowed percentage a year.
It’s not the $15 here. It’s the $15 here, $50 there, and $3.75 there. As you have said, the small amount on each person isn’t a burden, but the resulting cash flow allows specialized programs. It’s not the individual fees. It’s all the fees added together, and this is just the latest in the stream of fees that resemble airline prices. Sure it’s only $150 to Miami, but then you add the $50 for bags over 50 lbs, $15 for a carry on, $5 for a 4 oz bag of peanuts, and you’re up to way over the original price.

The University of Kentucky is committed to becoming an autocratic school by whatever means necessary, and this includes passing random fees with little interaction from the school or community. If something isn’t controlled, someone will find a way to make it controlled. PTS was merely the first department to claim the money stream from bicycles. I don’t believe this will help the UK students, staff or community one iota unless a detailed plan is released, and it will not happen.

Also, I’m not quite sure there is a “student’s side” to this argument – there is the side of those cyclists who have been working long and hard to get this campus to take bicycles seriously, and see how this policy works to legitimate bicycling as the most viable means of transportation to and from campus, and then there are those (cyclists or not) who flew off the handle at the first sign of (not really) paying $15 to make this campus a better place. Most things in life aren’t free – whether it means you have to work for it or fork over a few bucks – and this is no exception.

I’ll be the first to tell you that students shouldn’t be forced to pay for bicycling improvements or sustainability initiatives (my other area of expertise and heavy involvement over the past three years). My dream world would be one in which this university could take initiative on something positive without having to have students lead the way or pay for these projects. But that comes down to the way our state government has set priorities over the years. If you want to be outraged, be outraged that our state has an incredibly regressive tax structure which has left us bankrupt after poorly thought out tax breaks to corporations that don’t deliver. Be upset that our politicians (Democrats and Republicans alike) are totally incompetent. Don’t be upset that for the first time in our university’s history, there will be a revenue stream, generated from minimal individual inputs, that will be explicitly devoted to bicycling infrastructure improvements.

And by the way, I very much agree with your sentiment that UK often doesn’t quite know what it’s doing (go back and look at the things I’ve written as a Kernel columnist previously) – but this is one of the few cases in which UK is doing EXACTLY the right thing for everyone involved.

UK might be 144 years old but it acts like a teenager quite a bit.

Michael – you’re right, a few thousand dollars won’t widen the roads. But all money has to come from somewhere, so as the permit fees accumulate money over the coming years, there will certainly be enough to start striping bike lanes on streets that don’t already have them. The streets with bike lanes or that feed onto streets with bike lanes get well over double the bike traffic of every other entry point on campus – and the campus bike study backs that up. Also, I fail to see how the principle of registering bikes as a theft deterrent and opportunity for education, while simultaneously paying for bike facilities, is a big deal (in the negative sense). And while it’s not about the price, why continue to evoke the notion that UK is trying to ‘take away the one option that is free’? You’re arguing against yourself there.

Try telling the ridiculously large number of students, faculty and staff who have been hit by cars or have been doored on the UK campus due to a combination of insufficient facilities, road hazards and crazy drivers that the conditions aren’t bad. My partner has been hit twice on her bicycle within the confines on the UK campus. If you like being treated as if bicycling isn’t a viable form of transportation, be my guest – but we’ll go ahead and be joining the likes of University of Wisconsin as one of the country’s best campuses for bicycling.

Is Parking & Transportation going to confiscate the bikes of Lexington community visitors? Cut bike chains that will have to be replaced and impound fees too no doubt? “Tickets” for unregistered bikes?