The Council for Sustainability at SCAD

For more information, check out the Teach-in page.

District, SCAD’s award-winning student news source published in Savannah, now has a regular sustainability/environmental columnist, Stephanie Bercht. To date the Green Angle secion of the District Web site has provided a directory of local services and resources, celebrated the virtues of tap water and offered green tips for the New Year. Check out the Green Angle here.

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.

Mayor Otis Johnson will headline the next Dump the Pump event on Friday, Oct. 3, when he leads a group bicycle commute into downtown Savannah.

The first ever Dump the Pump Convoy will depart from the Habersham Village shopping center and end at the corner of Bull and Broughton streets, where the Mayor will dedicate the first in a series of bicycle racks the City is installing throughout downtown Savannah.

With high gas prices and continued supply uncertainties, more and more people are turning to alternative forms of transportation. Anyone can join the Bike Convoy, which will be guided by experienced cyclists from the Savannah Bicycle Campaign. The group event is a way to introduce bicycle commuting to people who might be interested in riding to work but unsure of routes or intimidated to start out alone.

The Convoy will leave Habersham Village at 8:15 a.m., and meet up with a second group led by the Mayor gathering at Baldwin Park at Atlantic and 41st streets. The Convoy will then ride north on Lincoln Street, ending at Bull and Broughton streets, where free coffee and bagels will be served.

Mayor Johnson will lead the press conference there beginning about 9 a.m. He will highlight a plan to roll out a series of bicycle racks through downtown — part of a broader strategy to ease traffic and parking congestion downtown, as well as promote the Mayor’s Thrive initiative, which promotes environmental sustainability, and Healthy Savannah 2012, which promotes healthy living.

This will be the fourth “Dump the Pump: Leave Your Car at Home Day” held in Savannah since April. The events are intended to raise awareness about the benefits of using alternative modes of transportation and to encourage residents to commute by carpooling, mass transit, bicycling and walking.

Dump the Pump is sponsored by the Savannah Development and Renewal Authority, the City of Savannah, Coastal Commuters, the Savannah Bicycle Campaign, Chatham Area Transit, and Pedestrian Advocates of the Coastal Empire.

Area residents can find carpool partners through Coastal Commuters or learn more about local transportation options at www.savannahtransit.com or bicyclecampaign.org.

For more information, contact the City of Savannah Public Information Office at 651-6410.

If you are serious about sustainable transportation, your vehicle of choice is a bicycle. In his “City Talk” column in the Sept. 21 Savannah Morning News, Bill Dawers points out another positive benefit to going by bike: Every person who arrives under pedal power frees up parking spaces for those who can’t or won’t leave their cars at home. Dawers made this observation of SCAD’s recently opened Arnold Hall:

“Why isn’t the parking crunch worse if there are so many courses offered? Many students are obviously taking the student shuttle, and when I dropped by one afternoon last week, there were 93 bicycles and three mopeds locked in front of the school.”

To read all of Dawers’ column, click here and scroll down to “Art students, parking, 93 bicycles.”