Walking is an active transportation mode that the majority of students use as their primary mode of transportation.  Also, nearly 10% of faculty and 5% of staff use walking to get around campus.  This is an excellent way to get around, it uses no gasoline fuel, and it is healthy which is an important part of overall sustainability.

To enhance pedestrian safety on campus, there are a number of infrastructure engineering techniques to increase safety.  The Campus Area Transportation Study (CATS) agencies worked together to identify safety improvements to implement throughout the University District.  These include curb-bump outs, continental crosswalks, road diets, lane narrowing, pedestrian signal improvements, and ADA accessible ramps.  These features have been incorporated at various sites throughout 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.

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. 

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.

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. 

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.

In 2011, the Student Sustainability Committee funded a Bike Sharing Feasibility Study, in order to assess whether a bicycle sharing program would be feasible and desirable on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus. 

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.

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 University, in collaboration with the cities of Champaign and Urbana, also offers short-term Dockless Bike Share through VeoRide (started in September 2018) to the students, faculty, staff, and visitors. Another Dockless Bike Share company, Gotcha Mobility, has applied to bring more bikes to the campus and community.