Bike Friendly’ Award Could Lead to Upgrades on UI Campus

A University of Illinois official assisting in efforts to build a campus-wide bicycling culture says national recognition should serve as leverage for more improvements.

The League of American Bicyclists this week proclaimed the Urbana campus as one of six new Bicycle Friendly Universities. In the past, the organization has recognized cities and businesses for the same honor.

U of I Sustainability and Transportation Coordinator Morgan Johnston says the league used amenities like the total miles of bike lanes on campus, and the amount of parking and storage for that designation. She says the designation is exciting, but hopes to use it to make bike facilities on campus much better.

"By receiving this designation, we're really going to need more resources to get the facilities up to current standards," said Johnston. "We now know what they should be, but we still need the funding to get it done. And so I'm really hoping that we can leverage this award to be able to find the funding needed to put in the updated bicycle lanes and paths."

She says the bronze award should also allow the U of I to place bike lanes in the street, and cut down on side paths.

"By doing that reduction, we'll actually have the ability to keep the off-road paths better maintained," she said. "For example, the path that goes across the (Urbana campus) quad. The paint is fading on all of our paths, and we want to paint them as bike lanes, but with no motor vehicle lanes between them."

Johnston says she hopes to tap a sustainability fund that was in the works about a year ago through the University of Illinois Foundation. Johnston says a completed bike plan should now allow the Foundation to reach out to donors