Yale Environment 360 magazine had a great article last week on biking culture in the United States versus that in Europe. Elisabeth Rosenthal pointed out that while we are building miles and miles of new bike lanes here, biking culture just hasn’t caught on in America quite like it has in Paris, Barcelona, or Copenhagen, where 37 percent of commuters use bikes to get to school or work.
The problem, she says, is that Americans and Europeans view biking differently at some core level. Think of your typical bike commuter here: Someone young (or youthful in body or spirit, at least) who has sporty tendencies, or perhaps a need for speed or daredevil attitude. They might be outdoorsy types, or folks with hard-core environmental sensibilities. Ms. Rosenthal describes the pictures of bikers that ran with a survey of bike-commuting towns in The Atlantic: “Bike riders with surfboards, riders with backpacks, and even riders traversing an empty forest. Students. Students. Students. A good portion of the bikes have drop handlebars, and many of the riders are wearing racing gear.”
Researchers at Lancaster University looked at the cultural attitudes in Britain, where biking has also been slow to catch on. Ms. Rosenthal talks with Dave Horton, a researcher behind the Understanding Walking and Cycling study, who offers this diagnosis: “Many people barely recognize the bicycle as a legitimate mode of transport; it is either a toy for children or a vehicle fit only for the poor and/or strange.”
Now, what do European bikers look like?: “They are men and women of all ages, in suits and dresses, fur coats and heels. They are riding sensible bikes. These are not sporting types, but a typical cross section of Europe’s working population, people going to the office on the vehicle that works well in their city.”
As Ms. Rosenthal points out with the observation of “students, students, students” in the Atlantic pictures, biking attitudes can be formed in college, which brings me to the question of this blog’s headline: What practices have been successful at pushing bike culture at colleges? We have reported on some cases in the past. Emory University, in car-addicted Atlanta, has been trying to get people on bikes. Pitzer College has an active “green bike” program. Tiny Ripon College, in Wisconsin, has had a successful program offering bikes to students who give up their cars. (The latest bike in the program, a Cannondale, comes in a custom Ripon colors — kinda cool. It probably helps that the president is a bike nut.)
Among the campuses that were recently given high marks for being “bike friendly” from the League of American Bicyclists, you find Stanford University at the top, followed by places like the University of California at Davis, which has long supported biking, and Portland State University, which has had a beer produced in honor of its biking culture. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro was given a bronze award for its bike-ability. Having visited Greensboro recently, I can confirm bikes and bikers are frequently seen around that town.
The league got only 32 submissions for consideration for its list. I didn’t find Oberlin College on the list, although I saw bikes everywhere (like the one pictured here) during a recent visit to Oberlin. I also would have expected to see the University of Colorado at Boulder, given what I have heard about biking culture there.
At some point in the future, I’d like to produce a broader article on college towns that have supported biking. I should be honest: The issue has both personal and professional value for me. I’m a biker and bike commuter in Baltimore, a city that at times seems openly hostile to bike riders. I also live in what is essentially a college-town section of the Baltimore area: Towson, Md., which is home not only to Towson University but also Goucher College. Students here could be strong advocates for two-wheel transport, yet that isn’t happening — not at an acceptable pace, anyway. Is it the daunting hills? An East Coast bias against bikes? (Biking seems more popular in Western cities.) A lack of bike facilities, like bike lanes and bike parking? A lack of attention to bike-friendly activities, like a bike-and-bar crawl?
My question is: What has encouraged biking on your campus?
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