In the past weeks,  Aparna reviewed the  BFU Application to understand the scope of work, did research/literature review work, and familiarized herself with the current initiatives taken by the university at present to combat bike thefts. Moreover, she also had a conversation with a transportation staff from UCLA and ASU who had recently reached out to me on their ideas/approach on this topic for a qualitative aspect of this project. The same was also discussed with her capstone advisor, Prof. Lindsay Braun to go over the progress and find better clarity. 

Congratulations to the newest recipients of our Greener Campus Programs!

Green Chapter: 

Phi Delta Theta, Silver, Certified November 2022

Green Office: 

iSEE, Gold, Recertified October 2022

F&S Capital Programs, Gold, Recertified November 2022

International Student & Scholar Services, Gold, Recertified November 2022

Green Event:

Chancellor's Office for Special Events and Commencement Illinois v. Eastern Illinois Men's Basketball, Certified November 2022

Office of the Chancellor for Special Events and Commencement Illinois vs. Kansas City Men's Basketball, Certified November 2022

Chancellor's Office for Special Events Il. v. Purdue Men's Football, Certified November 2022

Keep up the great work!

On November 7th, the Land and Water iCAP team met to review the results of the Milkweed survey, make final edits to the Monarch Butterfly recommendation, and discuss new recommendations inspired by the Campus Landscape Master Plan.

Meeting minutes are attached.

All, While my jury duty service was still in effect, we had reduced hours as needed last week but were able to open fully Wed – Fri. It was the first week of noticeably fewer folks through the doors. As such, we got a few bikes on the sales floor and a dozen or so moved over from storage.

Tomorrow we will host Working Bikes for our donation event. This is the first one since Nov 2019. We’ll have around 200 bikes to donate and hopefully will have a few folks available to help out and make it go quicker. They’ll be providing pizza for us, too. This event will halve the number of bikes left in storage. The Bike Project and I will sort through the remaining bikes in the coming weeks.

The numbers:

Visitors: 43
Sales: $475.50
Build-a-Bikes: 2 for $100
Memberships: 4 for $120

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

This week Aparna got in touch with the staff of transit services from Arizona State University to understand their approach to achieving the Gold BFU certification. 

Sarthak and Aparna also had a quick overview of the materials shared and brainstormed ideas/recommendations to raise awareness in the campus community as well as keep bike thefts in mind. 

The next steps would be to familiarize with the topic better, collect all the research materials and make notes/highlight the existing implementation, and make comments on these.

All, Last week was a busy one. We had Strong Towns talk on Tuesday and the Illinois Bike Summit on Wednesday. Got in some good networking, heard some interesting talks/discussions, and got buzzed by two MTD buses on my bike commute there and then one car on my ride back to the Bike Center. Oh, the irony.

The cooler weather has curtailed our visitors, but we’ve had a few volunteers, too—always nice.

Grabbed some bikes from the warehouse last week and will continue to do so as I can this week. I have jury duty potentially all this week and next week, which majorly mucks up my plans for setting up with Working Bikes since I can’t plan past day-to-day. Likely will have to bump that to early November unless circumstances change.

The numbers:

Visitors: 42
Sales: $266
Memberships: 3 for $90
Tires/tubes: 3 for $20

Thanks!

Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator

In this meeting,  potential ideas for secured bicycle parking were discussed as ways to promote awareness among the campus community. A capstone proposal outlining the final objectives and deliverables was drafted and Sarthak helped support this discussion sharing an Excel sheet that has all of the goals, current status, and plans for the future of some mentioned ideas towards achieving the said objectives with challenges that are yet to be tackled. 

This week, Aparna is going to try to get in touch with the transportation team from other universities that have achieved the Gold BFU status to gather some ideas specific to raising awareness about bike thefts. This would navigate the research better. 

Aparna is also spending her initial time on the project learning about the Bike registration process and other initiatives that are already ongoing at UIUC to help understand the way forward. She also has access to the iCAP portal to update and document the weekly meetings to keep a track of the project progress.

Questions and doubts regarding the literature review done in the past week were discussed including a capstone report outline highlighting the main topics of research. More research work to follow in the coming week to help familiarize with the project's background. Aparna got contact information from the transportation department of UCLA and Arizona State University to discuss the project with their transportation team as the 2 universities have achieved the Gold BFU status and hoping to get a sense of direction or any leads on this. She is also in touch with Prof. Lindsay Braun who is her capstone advisor, and Briana Barr, Thomas Valencia, and Lily Wilcock from the City of Urbana who are working on similar projects.

The idea was to bring more concepts and recommendations for a bike-friendly university to the table. We might also try to involve the Student Sustainability Committee, which uses a comprehensive evaluative process to fund a project that incorporates student involvement and an ability to spark change on campus. Aparna would help identify a cause as a part of the bike-friendly project which would also serve as a student-led project to apply for the SSC funding. An excel sheet that charts out the current status of the project were shared by Sarthak for better clarity, which also includes feedback from BFU to help plan for the future and achieve the desired goal.

Three main objectives of the proposal would be -

1. To get the BFU application drafted and ready to submit by the month of May
2. Ideas for SSC funding for the Bike Friendly University Project
3. Educate students and create a plan for bike thefts so that incoming students are aware of how to protect their bikes and encourage them to use this mode of transportation.

An overall capstone proposal that outlines the said objectives and a work plan will be shared in the upcoming week. Access to the iCAP portal will be granted soon to chart out real-time updates and minutes of meetings.