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Project Updates for collection: Bicycle Related Projects

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  1. Analysis of Existing Bicycle Fleet Survey Responses

    Associated Project(s): 
    Provide Working Bikes for University Employees

    After receiving responses from four different active bicycle fleets on campus after about 3 weeks of having our survey active, we wrote up an analysis of the responses. This analysis is attached to this post as a .pdf file. 

     

    This past week we continued reaching out to people that we have either met in person about potentially starting bicycle fleets on campus. Doug Wolters, Director of Operations for ACES, was able to reach out to the business managers of ACES to share information that we sent him. I also sent emails to a couple people that took our survey requesting a short meeting so we can further discuss their program's success as well as any ways we can improve their bicycle fleets. 

    Attached Files: 

  2. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, last week we had 76 visitors, maybe one of the lowest totals for a full week this semester. It did coincide with cooler weather, so that helps to explain it. As far as the numbers go, we grossed 824.03; we sold 4 memberships for $120; one refurbished bike for $190; and one Build-a-Bike for $145.

    Last week I prepped for the bike shipment that will happen this Friday at 10am. Jim Sims dropped by, which was cool. The new outdoor fix-it station pumps arrived, another very cool thing. We got a great deal on some winter riding gear from our supplier, which should help get more people riding once it gets really chilly. I spoke with Simon Pokorny who is still interested in teaching a basic maintenance class, so when his schedule opens up a little, we will coordinate on that.

    This coming week I plan on prepping more for the bike shipment as well as ramping up publicity for it. The APO volunteer core is having trouble generating more interest due to transportation constraints so I will discuss options with them in advance of the event.

    Sincerely,

     

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

     

  4. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, last week was a good one and ended on a high note—Friday was beginning-of-the-semester level busy. We had 95 visitors. Our gross sales were $1,268.60; we sold 10 memberships for $300, one bike for $150, and one build-a-bike for $140.

    The major goings-on last week was the bike census on Wednesday. It went well! We collected a lot of useful and important data. I was interviewed about the event by the Daily Illini. Lily did a tremendous job organizing and executing the event. The service manager at Champaign Cycle stopped by and introduced himself; it’s always nice to have a face-to-face with other bike shops in town.

    This week I will be prepping bikes and pulling the good ones at the warehouse, scrapping the pile of junker bikes that Neutral kindly donated, building more for-sale bikes as well as some new storage shelves for the shop.

     

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

  5. Update on Bicycle Fleet Progress from August to October 2016

    Associated Project(s): 
    Provide Working Bikes for University Employees

    Here is an update of what Lily Wilcock and myself (Logan Ebeling) have accomplished concerning departmental bicycle fleets on campus from late August to late October.

     

    We began with a goal of assessing the health and status of current departmental bicycle fleets on campus. Offhand, Lily knew of the following programs:

    • Kinesiology department
    • Living Learning Community in LAR
    • Urban Planning department
    • Building Operations and Maintenance
    • Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning

    In an attempt to reach out to those programs and other ones that we potentially did not know about, we developed a survey for people involved with those programs to take. A link to that survey was sent out in an E-Week advertisement on October 2nd. A screenshot of that blurb in the E-Week is attached to this post. We are still waiting on responses from that survey (so far we have about 3 responses). 

    Another goal was to advertise to departments that starting a bicycle fleet was even a possibility. Anecdotally, it seems that many people are unaware that the University is encouraging bicycle use for employees. To address this, we developed a short enrollment form that people could fill out if they wanted more information on starting a departmental bicycle fleet. A link to this enrollment form was also sent out in the October 2nd E-Week advertisement. We had around 10 replies to this enrollment form and sent out an email to the respondents with more information and an offer to meet and discuss possibilities for a bicycle fleet for their department. 

     

    One goal of mine was to develop two checklists to have available to people to aid in sending out information to people. These two checklists are completed and we have been sending them out to people where appropriate. The two checklists are attached to this post and they are:

    1. A checklist for maintaining existing bicycle fleets
    2. A checklist for starting a bicycle fleet

    These checklists drew heavily off of information in the Departmental Bike Sharing Manual from 2014 (attached to this project's main page). 

     

    Attached Files: 

  8. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, this past week was a short one; I was out of town Thursday and Friday. We had 45 visitors. Our gross sales were $625; we sold one bike for $103; and 10 memberships for $300.

    This past week the date for moving bikes out of the warehouse was finalized for Friday, November 4th. A very nice volunteer-oriented fraternity has pledged help with the event, which is awesome and will really make a one-day event like this possible. Lily also contacted me about F&S potentially purchasing some bike-share bikes—great news!

    With the weather cooling down, the staff and I have the time now to dedicate ourselves to walking people through—and teaching the skill and reasons for-- repairs and fixes.

    This coming week I plan to coordinate with the parking department on a few days each week between now and the 4th of November when I can prep and organize the bikes in the warehouse as well as having their assistance on the 4th. I will be helping count bikes on Wednesday for the bike census. And, of course the day-to-day bike building and organizing will happen.
     

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

  9. Several LCIs in town

    Associated Project(s): 
    League of American Bicyclists Courses

    Currently, there are several League Cycling Instructors in Champaign County.  Notable contacts include: Lily Wilcock, Cynthia Hoyle, and Jeff Yockey.  This training is provided through the League of American Bicyclists, and it supports bike education classes from certified instructors.

  11. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Departmental Bike Sharing

    All, this past week we had 107 visitors. We grossed $1,185.60. We sold 11 memberships; 1 bike for $120; 1 build-a-bike for $75.

    This past week I also reinstated the First Visit Free policy that The Bike Project had kindly let me suspend for the new school year rush. Traffic to CBC has slowed enough that I can accommodate small and easy repairs. I don’t have numbers on that but it was only a few people that had minor enough problems to warrant a free visit; most who think they have a small repair in truth have many, many small repairs equaling large amounts of time/resources and we have them become members.

    On Monday of last week our cargo bike Bluebird was loaned to the Psychology Department for a day.  Lily delivered and retrieved it from them and I believe it was a successful endeavor.

    This coming week will be a short one. I will be out of town Thursday and Friday. During this abbreviated week I plan to work on storage ideas for the surplus of wheels we have in the shop, strip the half a dozen or so bikes that are taking up dead space, as well as the standard operations of building bikes and managing new-parts inventory.

    Jake Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Manager

  12. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, for the week of 9/26/16 – 9/30/16 we had 101 visitors into the shop. We had $998.50 in gross sales; 14 memberships for $420; sold one build-a-bike for $40; and one refurbished bike for $100. Things are definitely slowing with the weather cooling down.

    This past week I spoke to a University of Illinois police officer--Aaaron, I believe—who is interested in getting one of his officers in here to work on bikes. Apparently the U of I police force has about six bikes that they routinely maintain at Durst cycle and they’d like to know how to do those repairs themselves and save time and money.

    I also continued to coordinate with the parking department and working bikes to send approximately 400 bikes to Tanzania. Apparently, as the working bikes representative put it, we are “too good at collecting bicycles” and we have to reschedule for a larger shipment.

    One of my student workers, Jose, had to resign. I will begin the hunt for his replacement.

    This coming week I will continue to coordinate the bike shipment. I will build bikes, price our nicer inventory of used parts, and look for a new employee.

    Have a pleasant week!

    - Jake Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Manager

  13. e-Week survey message

    Associated Project(s): 
    Departmental Bike Sharing

    Facilities and Services is collecting information on departmental bicycle fleets as part of the Campus Bicycle Plan. If you are interested in options for how to better sustain, grow or optimize your existing fleet, fill out the important survey by Oct. 14. Those interested in receiving information on starting a departmental bike fleet can fill out the form: http://go.fs.illinois.edu/bikefleet.

    Logan Ebeling . Facilities and Services

  15. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Light the Night
    Bicycle Education

    All, we had 88 visitors last week—and that includes being closed on Monday and Thursday! We grossed $1,145.30; sold 19 memberships for $570; one bike for $120; and one build-a-bike for $40.

    Last week was eventful. We had The Illinois Bike Summit, Light The Night, and on Friday I counted all the bikes in the warehouse: 517! Light the Night was very successful, installing 1188 lights (or 594 sets) at Alma Mater; numbers on the Illinois/Lincoln location are to-be-determined.


    In tandem with Working Bikes, we’ve set the date for the Bike Warehouse to be emptied: October 7th. I will coordinate with Parking to insure we have access on that date.

    I also set up a Facebook account to promote events and better connect with the cycling community.

    This week I will work on building new bikes that I acquired from the warehouse, continue to organize for the Bike Warehouse event, and persist on the Sisyphean task of organizing inventory and streamlining volunteer tasks to make better use of everyone’s time.

    Sincerely,

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

  16. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    Hello all, last week we had a gross sales total of 2,049.50. We sold 31 memberships for a total of $930. We sold 3 refurbished bikes for $360 and one build-a-bike for $80.

    We’ve had a decent stream of volunteers at the campus bike center this past week, which has been welcome. Lily and I also attended the Illinois Bike Summit on Monday. It was an informative and empowering event to see so many like-minded people working for better biking in Illinois. We are continuing to prep and promote for Light The Night on Thursday.

    This coming week we will host LTN, Lily is hosting Bicycling 101 and attending Urbana BPAC, which was eventful. I will continue inventory and the building of bikes as well continue to work on arranging for the bike warehouse exodus.
     

    Sincerely,

    • Jake Benjamin
      Campus Bike Center Manager

  17. ZAP! Program in Minnesota

    Associated Project(s): 
    Encourage Bicycle Use

    Minnesota has been tracking bicycle commutes for the past few years using Radio-Frequency Identification tags (RFID tags). The progam has been successful at making it quick and easy for bicycle commuters to log their trips on to campus and enter them in to raffles or gain wellness points.

    More information here:

    http://www.derozap.com/gopherzap/

    and,

    https://www.derozap.com/zaptwincities/

    Interesting program to watch as it has a positive impact on the Minneapolis/St. Paul mode-share.

  18. September 9th, 2016 Meeting

    Associated Project(s): 
    Transportation iCAP Team
    Develop Scenarios for Converting the UI Fleet to Renewable Fuels
    Reduce Driving on Campus
    2014 Campus Bike Plan [ARCHIVED]

    9/09/16

     

    Summary: This meeting was our inaugural meeting for the year. On the agenda today was the creation of a team description, a review of ongoing projects, and planning for future meetings.

     

    In attendance:

        Josh Feldman

        Claire Dondival

    Ankit Singhai

    Yangfeng Ouyang

    Pete Varney

    Lily Wilcox - Active Transportation Coordinator

    Olivia Webb - Sustainability Programs Coordinator

     

    Topics Covered:

     

    Team Description

    We collectively crafted our team description for the iCAP portal, which can be found at:  https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/transportation-swateam.

     

    Project Slides

    Renewable Fleet Study:

    Claire and Petehelped foster a discussion about the current types of alternative fuels for campus fleet vehicles. Currently, natural gas is the only type of fuel seriously looked at. One concern was that the gas CNG, while possible to implement, would be somewhat costly and have little payback unless driven many miles. Electric vehicles were brought up, but are currently not part of the market. Biodiesel was also mentioned, but its performance in cold weather is a concern.

     

    Staff Mode Shift:

    Lily discussed the ways that this project will reduce single occupancy vehicles. One idea looked at was bike sharing, which has been tried by Purdue but does not have much payback economically. Lily also discussed “It’s your MTD too”, which features social bus-riding trips which introduce MTD to campus employees.

     

    Bike Plan:

    This was a summary of effort to make campus more bike-friendly. This would include having more, and better, bike parking. UIUC was recently recognized as a bronze-level Bike Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.

     

    Future Meetings

    We decided that every other Friday at 1pm is a good time to hold meetings. We will be holding meetings in the National Soybean Research Laboratory. Our clerk Josh will send out reminders.

    Attached Files: 

  19. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    Hello all, first, the numbers: We had 78 visitors last week that signed our digital guestbook. We had $1,062.83 in gross sales; 15 memberships totaling $450; and a single build-a-bike for $120.

    Things of note: The Bike Project voted at the last meeting to implement a two week trial policy of no-free-visits for the Campus Bike Center, which netted us a lot more memberships than we otherwise would’ve had. But it also served to quickly inform people that the CBC is a cooperative, investable space not a free university-provided service.

    This past week I began reorganizing the shop, built up for-sale bikes, and organized a staff orientation meeting set for this evening.

    This week I will build more bikes, continue to arrange and organize the space, finalize a student workers’ schedule for this semester, and begin to coordinate with Parking and Working Bikes on a shipment of bikes bound for Lesotho and Botswana.

    Jake Benjamin

    Campus Bike Center Manager

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