Bicycle Ambassadors are bicycling enthusiasts who are working to improve bicycle culture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Interested students, staff, and faculty are encouraged to apply to become a Bicycle Ambassador by completing our online form.  Applications are now being accepted, and the Bike Ambassador program was launched on campus in September, 2013. 

Bicycling is the most sustainable mode of transportation.  It is fun, convenient, and healthy, yet many people do not utilize this excellent travel mode because they need more information.  The University is working with the communities to provide bicycle safety training, awareness events, and lessons in maintaining a bicycle.

Bicycle registration is primarily a method to assist with returning stolen or lost bikes when they are recovered. In Summer 2020, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Facilities & Services (F&S) department purchased a National Bicycle Registration system through Project 529 for campus and community.

The university is partnering with local agencies to produce and promote a number of different educational materials on bicycle safety to encourage and promote safe cycling habits.

These include: 

Biking on the University of Illinois campus and in Champaign-Urbana is an excellent option for much of the community. Illinois has been recognized as a bronze-level bicycle friendly university by the League of American Bicyclists. The City of Champaign has been recognized as a bronze-level bicycle friendly community and Urbana as a gold-level bicycle friendly community.

Dockless bike share programs began in our community in Fall 2018. Although it is not a service provided by campus, F&S is available to help answer questions about the program established in a collaboration with the university, the City of Champaign, and the City of Urbana. 

More information is available on the Fact Sheet below and in the Frequently Asked Questions in the Bike Sharing Blog post below. For further questions, contact Facilities & Services at bike@illinois.edu. 

The Sustainability Living Learning Community (LLC) and Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall (LAR) is starting a bike sharing program for the LLC residents.  The program will start with about six bikes for approximately 120 residents.  Bikes can be checked out for up to a day, and LLC community members will help maintain the bikes through membership at The Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign.

Bicycle Shelter is an enclosed structure where bicycles may be stored. This Bike Shelter is 14' x 63' utilizing Side Stage (vertical) bike racks, and it can accommodate up to 73 bicycles in two tiers. The bike shelter was installed in June 2021 and is ready for use. This project will help the University to improve its Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) status.

The Campus Bicycle Center — a collaboration between the University of Illinois and The Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign — is dedicated to empowering individuals with knowledge about how to repair and maintain bicycles and encouraging mode-shift away from single-occupancy vehicles.  This educational center offers hands-on experiential learning that students can’t get in a classroom.  By empowering people with the ability to fix a bicycle and providing a connection between the campus and the community, the Bicycle Center promotes bicycling, collaboration, and community spirit.

Champaign County Bikes works with the League of Illinois Bicyclists to produce a Champaign-Urbana Bicycle Map, and the Office of the Dean of Students funds and distributes thousands of these bike maps on campus each year.  

The map includes comfort rating for various roads in town and it notes the difficult intersections from a cycling perspective.  It includes a call out section focusing on the campus area, and the back of the map features a number of safety tips and resources.

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:  

Departmental Bike Sharing is a concept where University Departments would purchase a small number of bicycles to be made available to staff, faculty and graduate students for on-campus use during working hours.

Want to discuss options or interest in departmental bike share? Email bike@illinois.edu to get information and talk to a staff member that can give you more information.

The University is working to make cycling safer for everyone by improving the infrastructure for bicycling as well as the educational opportunities made available to cyclists, but it is also working to encourage new riders to try bicycling as a method of transportation. Programs such as Bike to Work Day are designed to encourage new cyclists. Bike Sharing is under discussion as an opportunity to provide bicycles to more users on campus. Finally, the University is exploring ways to incentivize bicycle commuting for its employees. 

Bicycle lanes, paths, parking and repair stations all help to make the campus more bicycle-friendly, and encourages campus users to travel and commute by bike. The University is working to improve existing features, and aims to create a network of high quality infrastructure that supports, encourages, and enables safe bicycling behavior. 

The Facility Standards for campus do not permit bicycles to be brought into buildings.  This is due to the impact on maintenance required for interior spaces when bicycles are brought into hallways, stairwells, and individual rooms.  However, there is a need for sheltered bicycle parking during winter months.  Therefore, F&S has worked to design a prototype indoor bike parking system.  The preliminary design shows that some interior spaces can be retrofitted to include indoor bike parking.  These spaces must be approved by the Architecture Review Committee, and they must follow all safe

In 2010, an informal survey was distributed online for campus users to complete.  This survey was focused primarily on getting the campus' opinion about where new and improved bike parking was most needed.  The information collected helped define the priorities for improved bike parking as funding becomes available.  This survey also contained some simple questions about various other bicycle related topics, such as bike sharing, shower facilities, and registration systems.

In FY12, the Student Sustainability Committee approved $225,000 to upgrade a number of bike parking locations on campus. Facilities & Services is completing the work to upgrade these locations by the end of Summer 2013.

The Illinois Cross-Campus Bicycles (ICCB) program is a bike sharing program within the departments of Kinesiology and Community Health, and is available for the faculty, staff, and paid graduate students of each department. This program was founded by Professor Wojciech Chodzko-Zajko in 2008 and has been running successfully since then.  

As the University is committed to reducing automobile traffic in the campus core to reduce emissions and increase pedestrian safety, incentives and benefits for bicycling will assist with this goal. To encourage more people to ride a bike to campus, programs could be implemented.

The University is exploring options to provide indoor storage for bicycles, both for regular daily use by cyclists, and for long-term storage options for students leaving on break. Currently University policies restrict campus buildings from allowing bicycles indoors, so these efforts will require policy changes as well as physical changes to create a safe and protected space indoors for bicycles. 

Japan House and the University of Illinois Arboretum request funding to provide bike racks on their grounds. There are currently no available bike racks in the 57-acre Arboretum and Japan House grounds. Japan House is the site of University classes and the Arboretum is frequently used as a resource for classes from units such as Landscape Architecture, and Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences. In addition, the Arboretum and the Japan House Gardens are a major recreational resource for students, faculty and staff and the general public.

Light the Night is an annual free bicycle light giveaway, funded by the Campus Area Transportation Study (CATS) agencies: the University of Illinois, C-U MTD, the City of Urbana and the City of Champaign. The Bike Project has been a partner group organizing the event, and in 2016, was a funder as well. Since 2008, volunteers have helped to install over 800 sets of bicycle lights each year.

The Campus Bike Center is offering a series of bike low-cost mechanics classes throughout the fall semester. All classes are open to students, staff, faculty and the general public. Unless otherwise noted, classes are at 7pm on the date indicated, at the Campus Bike Center, 608 E. Pennsylvania Avenue, Champaign.

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 $47.2M Multimodal Corridor Enhancement Project (MCORE) Project is unprecedented in our community’s history and will have a transformative impact.

The Facility Standards for campus do not permit bicycles to be brought into buildings.  This is due to the impact on maintenance required for interior spaces when bicycles are brought into hallways, stairwells, and individual rooms.  However, there is a need for sheltered bicycle parking during winter months. 

The F&S Pilot program will inform future efforts for indoor bike parking for buildings on campus. 

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.

Like any large community with many bicycles, bike theft is a problem in Champaign-Urbana.  Bike theft is a real barrier that prevents theft victims from riding bicycles, and discourages others from bringing high-quality bicycles to campus. The University aims to reduce bike thefts on campus by providing better, more secure bicycle parking and storage facilities, a more robust bicycle registration system, and by working with local police enforcement, bicycle shops, and community groups to identify theft deterrents on campus. 

Keys to reducing bicycle theft:

The goal of this project is to construct an area for students, graduate students, faculty, and staff who frequent the Chemical and Life Sciences Building and Roger Adams Laboratory to stow their bicycles in a secure location throughout the day (or night) that is sheltered from the elements.  Proposed locations of this structure would be either one of the grassy spaces between these two buildings on the south side courtyard.

Bicycles riding on streets are required to follow the Illinois Vehicle Code. Off-streets, they must follow the University Bike Code. The University of Illinois Police Department (UIPD) are empowered to issue warnings and citations to cyclists who are not following these respective laws.  

The Campus Administrative Manual includes the requirement to follow the University Bicycle Ordinance, which enforces safe cycling behavior on all off-road university property, including sidewalks, shared use paths, and bicycle paths.

Y-Cycles is a bike sharing program led by the university YMCA. Currently the program is waiting on the shipment of two bikes for use in the summer of 2013. The program is also in the process of purchasing two more bikes, in order to make four available for use in the Fall 2013 semester.