The Council for Sustainability at SCAD

An article in the Oct. 19 New York Times surveys what colleges and universities are doing to encourage bicycle use. Some of the benefits of bicycle programs are neatly summarized in this snip from the article:

“The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus.”

While students are the focus of many of these efforts, faculty and staff are also being encouraged to leave their cars at home by programs that incentivize bicycle commuting, coupled with disincentives to discourage single occupant motorvehicle commutes. The objective is to increase the percentage of college employees who arrive by bike. Obviously the number of employee bicycle commuters will be affected by a variety of factors that vary from institution to institution including bicycle infrastructure (both on-campus and in municipalities), terrain and weather.

What kinds of percentages are attainable? Consider a recent US News and World Report story that suggests less than 1 percent of trips in the United States are made by bike. By this measure, Keys Hall’s bicycle commuting rate is an astronomical success.

Home to the communications and student media departments at SCAD, around 55 full-time employees work in Keys Hall. From my observations, at least 10 of my coworkers commute by bike at least occasionally. If my math is correct, that means that around 18 percent of Keys Hall employees arrive at work on a bicycle at least once a week. At least half of these are daily bicycle commuters. Consider that in Portland, the city that boasts our nation’s highest bicycle commuting rates, 3.5 percent of trips to work are made by bike. Keys Hall clearly leaves Portland in the dust. If Keys Hall were a nation, it would be tied with Denmark for the percentage of its population that gets to work via bicycle.

Can any other SCAD building top Keys Hall’s bicycle commuting percentage? What can be done to increase employee bicycle commutes to other college facilities? Please discuss in the comments section.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under The Green Scene. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.