Campus Survey

Well as I mentioned here, I have funding for the first part of my bike rack implementation program, I am waiting on the head of facilities to get back from surgery and then finalizing with him and ordering will happen. The plan is to have the racks and be able to install them around Earth Day, which gives about 4 weeks. The first step to that though, is finding the places that cyclists find most lacking in current parking. I am in the process of creating a survey with the head of Human Resources on campus that would do just that, and a little bit more. I am aiming this at students as well as teacher/staff and want to know how they ride their bike (or if they do). What reasons they may not or don’t even bring a bike to campus, where parking is inadequate, and finally bike sharing.

A couple years back a bike share system was started as a senior project, it was well intentioned, but fell victim to the "tragedy of the commons." The bikes were free for anybody, basic recycled models and could be used at any time anywhere. Very soon, they were found trashed all over town, in the river, in the lake, messed up, destroyed and its usefulness never came true.

So with that in mind my proposal, which I don't think I will be able to implement before I leave, but hopefully can get others interested in, involves personal ownership with payments of a non refundable, and refundable deposits and participants are given a bike to take care of for a term or year. This is a question for both students and staff as I feel there is demand for bikes on campus for commuters that may travel to and from campus by car due to their living distance.

I also mention the bike-commuting stipend from the federal government, for staff and teachers, and if they knew about it or would offering this program make them more willing to commute by bike.

I am moving ahead with this and I have received support on all fronts for this so far, this is a good use of time while I wait to finalize the racks and get them to campus.

There will be more on this, including the finalized questions, shortly as I hope to have everything finalized by Monday.

rant time at the bar and grill

I don’t want to get into detail now as I have to finish studying for a geology test tomorrow as well as a bunch of other things but nonetheless wanted to update. Yep its a rant, sorry about that.

I think I mentioned here that I submitted a grant proposal for new cycle racks on campus through the campus Green Grant fund. This is student money raised by an optional fee that can be used toward student projects throughout campus.

I had an 8000$ (max) bid in for new proper hoop racks as the first stage in creating proper cycle infrastructure and parking on campus. I had full support from faculty and staff on the allocation committee but was whittled down to less then 6000 by some of the student representatives who I consider my friends, unfortunately I could not attend the decision making meeting, and there was no place for me to attend anyway. However one of the students felt that two or so racks "over here somewhere will be fine" so I guess I should be lucky anything came through. However to do a proper plan for campus would involve 30,000$ in racks both at classes and dorms, plus more for proper covered parking at both classes and dorms. I could take every bit of that fund that’s left and put it to use within 6 months and have results on the ground

I am pissed though and it means that I will, instead of working for outside sources be back for more. We have 2/3 of 26,000$ that are not allocated and are sitting in a fund not making money, just sitting there and they could not give me an extra ~2000$ to bring in more racks and do a proper first phase roll out. I will be writing a letter to the campus newspaper as the students involved did this to my project, as well as to a bid for recycling containers outside around campus, and that is not acceptable to me and shouldn’t be acceptable to any student who paid the fee and is seeing NO results on campus. Of all the projects supported so far (6) mine is the MOST visible with the fastest turnaround in terms of installation of any project, current and past. It took a year before our bio-diesel converter even got online and its still not fully operational, yet certain students feel the need to nickel and dime me to death on a subject they know NOTHING about. I am a transportation planner (in training) this is what I do, I do the research, and I know what cyclists need on campus. I am sick of non-cyclists dictating to me what is best for me and other cyclists, I know they don’t know the subject, which is why they should defer to somebody who does. I don’t tell a firefighter how to fight a fire, because I am not one, it’s the same deal.

This is a power trip pure and simple, it’s a lack of forward thinking and vision and an acceptance and love of mediocrity that it seems permeates this campus and the North Country. Its not like we were out of money or anything, so once again most of the fund money goes unused and just sits there doing nothing for another year.

Un-fucking-believable.

Attention Attention, read all about it news at 11!!!

right for most of us this is not news, however we now have a new validated study to give to the people that blame cyclists for all sorts of things

New UK government study on cycling, via The Guardian.

this is huge! Sustrans just reported on this via their Facebook feed and a full report should be coming out and available to the general public shortly.

in short in the vast majority of accidents where police were present the cyclist's lack of stopping at red lights, or dark clothing, or lack of lights only contributed to 2% of cases each for a grand total of ~8% of overall accidents involving cars

yep its those damn no helmet dark cyclists running red lights are are ruining our cities ;)