The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has completed and approved the 2014 Campus Bike Plan, a master plan to direct our efforts for future bicycle infrastructure improvements and program development. The 2014 Campus Bike Plan outlines the various ways in which the University should improve for bicycles in the coming years.

The university currently has roughly 5,000 bicycle parking spaces on campus. There is a need to upgrade some of this to current standards, to add additional, new bike parking, to develop covered bike parking to protect bikes from incelment weather, and to identify opportunities for long-term storage of bikes during off-seasons. 

In order to help ensure that students, employees, and visitors who choose to bicycle on campus are following the rules of the road and acting in a safe, predictable manner, the University works with outside partners to offer bicycle safety classes on campus and in the surrounding community. In the future, we also hope to develop courses and educational opportunities specifically catered to the unique campus audiences, such as incoming freshmen and transfer students, international students, and so on. 

Bike sharing is a system for sharing bicycles on a short-term basis.  On the Urbana campus bike sharing includes both hourly and semester-long rentals, departmentally-owned bikes for employees, and bicycles available to specific student groups.

The cities of Urbana and Champaign worked together to produce a bicycle education video to introduce the public to the bicycle infrastructure that is being installed around both cities and to teach motorists and bicyclists how to interact with each other on the road.

This 14 minute video, entitled C-U Sharing the Road was filmed on local C-U streets and features many local C-U bicyclists. The video was filmed, edited, and produced by Urbana Public Television.

 Topics covered in the program include: 

The UIUC Pilot Bike Share program is a proposal for a two year pilot bike share program. This pilot program will be a 50 bike fleet. It will be using a new approach to bike sharing through smart locks. Smart locks contain all the technology for the bike-sharing program linked to a smart phone. The smart locks will allow for versatility in the type of bikes to use within the system and where the bikes could be located. iSEE is exploring a collaboration with BitLock for the smart locks and Neutral Cycle for the bikes.

The Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD), City of Champaign, City of Urbana, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign are partnering to improve mobility in our communities core through a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. The $35M MCORE Project is unprecedented in our community’s history and will have a transformative impact.

MCORE Project construction is anticipated to start in September of 2016 and continue into 2019, covering five separate project areas to improve key urban transportation corridors.

Many encouragement programs for cycling address the needs of cyclists who choose to commute via bicycle.  In some cases, the cyclist arrives on campus feeling sweaty and would like to freshen up before beginning the work or school day.  To this end, it is convenient if showers are provided for bicycle riders to use on campus.  The Business Instructional Facility (BIF) and Lincoln Hall have bicyclist showers for the staff and approved users.  This option should be provided to other campus cyclists, to help encourage more bike riding.

The 2015 iCAP, chapter 4, objective 4, is "Reduce the percentage of staff trips made using single-occupancy vehicles from 65% to 55% by FY20, 50% by FY25, and 45% by FY30." In order to have a sizable impact on transportation emissions, campus will need a multi-faceted program that encourages and educates the entire University community on active transportation options.  Successful transportation demand management programs incorporate incentives for commuters to switch from Single Occupa