The Red and Black

Cat Erickson bought her Specialized off-road bike at Sunshine Bicycles. "It makes me a nicer person if I don't have to drive," said Erickson, a biker since age 12. (File - The Red & Black) [Click to enlarge]

As fuel costs remain high and available close-in parking spaces on campus are at a minimum, University parking services is considering ways to encourage more students and faculty to commute by bicycle.

Although the University campus boasts 17,500 parking spaces, more than 2,000 undergraduate commuters who apply for parking spaces on campus each year are consistently denied a permit.

Diane Hale, University parking services manager, said her goal is to find alternative options to reduce the high demand for parking on campus.

Hale said she wants to encourage biking to campus in an attempt to conserve parking spaces and consumer fuel costs.

A parking services subcommittee met Thursday to discuss the possibility of providing bike lockers for rent to commuting cyclists.

The rentable bike lockers would house bicycles in a type of locked and covered shed that would deter theft and provide shelter from rain.

Hale said bike lockers are common in the downtown areas of European cities where there is not enough room for a majority of the population to commute with their personal motor vehicles.

The lockers would be placed in parking decks or in various locations around campus.

Parking services has an alternative transportation program with 1,300 participants this year, a slight increase from last year due in part to the recent popularity of mo-peds and scooters.

Registered alternate transporters include those who travel to campus by carpool, mo-ped or bicycle.

Parking services distributes permits to these commuters that allow them 24 days to park vehicles on campus in cases of inclement weather or carpooling problems.

However, 75 percent of those driving scooters also hold car permits on campus, causing parts of the alternative transportation program to have little effect on reducing the number of vehicles on campus.

Hale encourages commuters to have one primary mode of transportation to free up space on campus and reduce fuel usage.

She wants to provide more convenience and better facilities on campus for cyclists, such as placing bike lockers near heavily used buildings, as well as increasing access to bike lanes and the bus systems, giving cyclists an advantage over car drivers.

"I think there's an interest in bike lockers," Hale said, "but I don't know how big of an interest."

Jake Wood, a senior from Atlanta, has been riding his bike to campus for the past four years.

"I personally would not pay for a bike locker, but the idea of having a locker does sound nice," he said.

The subcommittee is planning to conduct an e-mail survey this semester to see if there is a market for more biker-friendly facilities on campus.

If the survey results reveal students and faculty would like to rent bike lockers, they could be in place by the fall semester.

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