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I met with Morgan and Stacey on 8/30/2023 to discuss the progress of the 2024 Campus Bike Master Plan. The major discussion was about Chapter 3: Goals and Objectives, and I will be re-organizing the goals and objectives under three key goals:
We also discussed the soft publish date to be 5/1/2024 and a hard deadline of 6/30/2024.
Prepare outline for bike audit
Re-familiarize self with stuff
Black racks are ground mounted, we want bike racks on rails (gray ones)
Only university owned bike racks and paths
On 08/29/2023, Stacey, Sarthak and Hrushikesh along with city planners of Urbana and Champaign had an introductory in-person meeting with BirdBike. The agenda of this meeting was to get a demo of the BirdBike bicycles and have discussion on potentially introducing these bikes on-campus and the in both cities.
Meeting Notes:
1) Membership opportunity
2) BirdBike facilitating no bike zone in certain areas of campus .
3) Demo of the Bikes and its parking system.
4) Safety features and precautions.
5) Using GPS and VPS system for tracking and parking.
6) Helmet Safety feature.
7) Rider Quiz before every ride.
8) Wayfinding for campus bike rack parking locations
All, Another doozy of a week. Long wait times for stands, cash offers to “hold” bikes, and my favorite: “When will you get a new shipment of bikes?”
This week promises to be a little better with more staff on board, and presumably fewer folks coming for their registration sticker. We’ll also have our first Friday Ride of the semester. Weather looks good for it!
Tonight is the Bike Project Members’ Meeting. I’ll mention it to all the new members we sign-up today.
The numbers:
Visitors: 142
Sales: $2,631.38
Bikes (refurb): 5 for $855
Bikes (B-a-B): 2 for $100
Memberships: 28 for $840
Tires/tubes: 37 for $263
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator
On 08/26/2023, Sarthak and Hrushikesh were part of a tabling event held in the community center of Family and Graduate Housing at Orchard Downs. Our goal in the event was to spread awareness about the use of bicycles and to give out all the information about bicycles along with free goodies like wrist bands, Keychain, Bike route maps, Bicycle safety rules, and Bike Registration procedure.
Please see attached the agenda and documents shared during this meeting. Watch the meeting recording here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gJBM9J-Tc1nGEg5lCEa4uxfQ8NgzOUea/view?u...
All, The semester has officially started! People are knocking on the doors at all hours, we’re almost out of sale bikes, the 529 registrations are a near constant, and there’s a wait for stand time by 3p every day. Demand is never higher than this time of year.
On Saturday, we had the Illini Frenzy, and our spin-a-prize bike wheel was a huge hit. Something Pavlovian about the act of spinning a wheel. Even when we were out of all our freebies, people spun it anyways, and a line formed almost immediately. I’ll need to work out a couple of things with it, but I think it’s a keeper for outreach events and the like.
On Friday, Daniel and Rick—two experienced volunteers—came by to lend a hand—and boy did we need it! Many thanks to them. Also, thanks to Todd for grabbing scrap over the weekend.
This week I’ll try to throw some bikes together during our off hours, send out some offer letters for new hires, and do some trainings for our new/returning staff.
The numbers:
Visitors: 156
Sales: $3,127.75
Bikes (refurb): 13 for $1,840
Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
Memberships: 21 for $630
Tires/tubes: 10 for $84
Thanks!
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator
On 08/18/2023, Stacey, Sarthak and Hrushikesh had a meeting to discuss the Project Scope for ADA Accessibility Survey of the Campus.
Discussed the budget required for this project along with the parameters and boundaries of selection criteria for the Sidewalks and Crosswalks survey.
On 08/18/2023, Sarthak and Hrushikesh visited the Round Barns to give out two abandoned bicycles to their respective owners who had registered their bicycles.
Sarthak sent announcements (to Caitlin Kaparaz) to be added to the ISSS newsletter (publishing on August 25):
Optional announcement
Two new digital signs were added to campus buildings
On 08/15/2023 and 08/17/2023 , Sarthak and Hrushikesh had meetings regarding the progress on the Campus Bike Plan 2024. Please refer to the attached file to check for the updated information.
On 08/08/2023 and 08/10/2023 , Sarthak and Hrushikesh had meetings regarding the progress on the Campus Bike Plan 2024. Please refer to the attached file to check for the updated information.
On 08/01/2023 and 08/03/2023 , Sarthak and Hrushikesh had meetings regarding the progress on the Campus Bike Plan 2024. Please refer to the attached file to check for the updated information.
On 07/25/2023 and 07/27/2023 , Sarthak and Hrushikesh had meetings regarding the progress on the Campus Bike Plan 2024. Please refer to the attached file to check for the updated information.
Hi all,
City of Urbana has approved an ordinance to tow away cars parked in the bike lanes on Green Street between Wright and Lincoln. They will next try to add this to a traffic code to write citations as well (that's a future topic).
See below the link from City Council's meeting where John Zeman presented the Green Street bike lane ordinance.
Thank you,
Sarthak
All, Short week for me as I was out Wed – Fri last week. My staff covered in my absence.
In the couple days I did work, we got the rest of the bikes out of the barn and began some Tetris-like work in reorganizing our space and bikes. Got a deluge of applications since I was out, which is great. I’ll schedule interviews for this week.
Likely will get very busy this week as students return. I’ll build bikes as I can.
The numbers:
Visitors: 20
Sales: $1,021
Bikes (refurb): 3 for $480
Memberships: 8 for $240
Tires/tubes: 4 for $52
Jacob Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Coordinator
On July 19, 2023, the Eco-Counters at the Bookstore/Transit Plaza location were installed. This is the fifth location on-campus that has the counters. This counter was purchased and installed through the funding awarded by SSC.
Veo Cosmo-e pilot feedback form has ended. The preliminary results shows support to bring the Cosmo-e to the campus, and the pilot has been extended into the fall semester. We will review the comments in more detail over the next few weeks and publish the final report.
On August 8, 2023, the Bicycle Friendly University 2023 application was submitted. See attached the final application.
