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Project Updates for collection: Bicycle Related Projects

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  1. The Urbana Campus Renews Its Bicycle Friendly University Certification

    Associated Project(s): 
    Bicycle Friendly University Status

    Please see announcement online here: https://fs.illinois.edu/News/campus-renews-its-bicycle-friendly-universi...

     

    Campus Renews Its Bicycle Friendly University Certification

    Nov 16, 2023 | 11:54 am

    The Urbana Campus Extends Its Bicycle Friendly University Status Through 2027

    For over a decade, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been recognized as a Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) by the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) for its unwavering devotion to promoting and providing a bike-friendly environment for students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

    Recently, the LAB renewed the university’s designation through 2027, based on continued efforts and achievements in advancing and enabling safe, accessible, and transformative bicycling opportunities on campus. The Urbana campus is among a select group of 221 colleges and universities in 46 states and the District of Columbia that are taking action to address the health and environmental challenges facing the nation by creating campuses more welcoming to people who bike.

    Associate Vice Chancellor and Executive Director of Facilities & Services Ehab Kamarah said, “We want to encourage even more individuals to regularly ride their bikes on our campus as a primary means of transportation. Being a Bike Friendly University exemplifies our commitment to making that possible by enhancing safety for active transportation modes, modernizing infrastructure, and supporting programs that make it easy, affordable, fun for everybody to bike.”

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    Highlights of the university’s significant accomplishments include the following:

    Engineering

    • Completed 100 percent of the high-priority and 72 percent of the medium-priority infrastructure projects outlined in the 2014 Campus Bicycle Master Plan.
    • Installed an enclosed bicycle shelter that accommodates 96 bicycles near student residence halls in 2021.
    • Established automatic pedestrian and bicycle counters (Eco-Counter) at five traffic locations to better assess current bike land and pathway usage trends.

    Education

    • Created new bicycle educational videos with closed-captioning that are available for the entire campus community to view.
    • Organized a free “Learn How to Ride” bike rodeo class for university students.

    Encouragement

    • Launched a community-wide dockless bike share program, operated by Veo, which currently provides 750 bicycles on campus and in the cities of Champaign and Urbana.

    Equity

    • Partnered with the U of I’s Disability Resources and Educational Services unit to review all new construction, renovation, or maintenance projects to ensure that there is an accessible path available in and around impacted areas, including for bicycle navigation. Information about closures is also posted at https://go.fs.illinois.edu/Closures and shared by university social media accounts.

    Education & Planning

    • Joined a national bicycle registration system (Project 529) in July 2020, which is now available to all university faculty, students, and staff, as well as Champaign, Urbana, and Savoy residents.
    • Collaborated with the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD), City of Champaign, and City of Urbana to improve mobility in the core areas of the community through a federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant. The $47M MCORE Project transformed key corridors into “complete streets” with redesigned street configurations that emphasized dedicated bike lanes, added access to public transformation, and reduced multimodal conflicts.
    • Incorporated bike objectives and metrics into the Campus Landscape Master Plan in 2022.

    The university’s bike efforts and outreach are chronicled at https://bike.illinois.edu. More information about the BFU program is available at https://bikeleague.org/university. For questions, contact Sarthak Prasad sprasad9@illinois.edu, 217-300-9575.

  2. Weekly Update: Kids bike giveaway, Cranksgiving

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Busy week on the sales floor as the weather warmed up and we sold a few bikes. Also, got a half dozen or so kids bikes repaired for the KBG event in December.

    Over the weekend the Bike Project held their Cranksgiving bike food drive. Riders were able to collect ~400 lbs of donations to Faith UMC Food Pantry!

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 43
    Sales: $1,173.75
    Bikes (refurb): 3 for $530
    Memberships: 7 for $210
    Tires/tubes: 26 for $229

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  3. Weekly Update: Cranksgiving, Halloween last week

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Halloween was last week, and we are still awash in candy and Halloween-themed cellophane.

    Weather bumped back up, too, and we had a wait for stands on Friday. As the mercury goes, so do we. Accordingly, Monday and Wednesday project to be busy. 

    Getting some bikes on the sales floor and tackling some organizational projects; will continue to do so this week. Will also tackle some more kids bikes as we ramp up production for that.

    This coming Saturday (11/11) the Bike Project is hosting Cranksgiving, a bicycle ride/food drive to collect donations for a local food pantry. I’ll mention it to my staff and patrons this week.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 43
    Sales: $484
    Memberships: 9 for $270
    Tires/tubes: 8 for $59

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  4. Weekly meeting with Ethan

    Associated Project(s): 
    2024 Campus Bike Plan
    Independent Student Projects

    Sarthak & Ethan Meeting 11/3

    Campus landscape master plan 

    • where there is a map, see if there is anything related to trails or sidewalks, see where they are mentioned, try to include that in our plan 
    • Include: Implement campus landscape master plan
    • Page 25
    • Main quad district (we can use the image on page 66)
    • On Monday, begin process of pulling out data from landscape plan 
    • Work in person on Wednesday at 1pm

    Evaluation section

    • Add implement campus landscape master plan 

    Implementation

    • put projects on the list from landscape plan 
    • Can use the images from the plan

    Wednesday we will organize the document 

    Equity and accessibility section

    • only talk about how we want Ada accessible

    Existing Conditions

    • can minimize words, do not need as much details 

    Crash Data

    • update graph 

    Landscape plan excel:

    • Look at bike factors in its goals/recommendations 
    • Any bike related projects, take note of them, and where they are located

  6. Weekly Update

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, Made some headway on the abandoned bikes and already have six on the sales floor. We tabled at the Green Quad Day last week as well. This week I’ll work on tallying inventory--and the marketing/publicity—for the Kids Bike Giveaway as well as getting regular bikes up for sale.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 47
    Sales: $862
    Build-a-Bike: 1 for $40

    Memberships: 14 for $420

    Tire/tubes: 17 for $131

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  7. BFU award notification

    Associated Project(s): 
    Bicycle Friendly University Status

    Dear Sarthak,

    Thank you again for applying to the League of American Bicyclists' Bicycle Friendly University (BFU) program! After careful review of your 2023 application, and in consultation with local cyclists and advocates, I am pleased to inform you that University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is awarded a Silver BFU designation. Congratulations!  You should take great pride in the bicycle friendly campus you have created for your students, employees, and visitors!

    The official announcement of the 2023 BFU Awards will be made next Thursday, October 26, through the distribution of a national press release and online at www.bikeleague.org. We appreciate you keeping the news of your award private until then so that we may have a more effective and impacting message. We hope that you too will announce your designation on October 26th. 

    Included below are links to an announcement toolkit for your use, along with the 2023-2027 Silver BFU award seals. 

    2023 BFU Award Announcement Toolkit:  https://bit.ly/BFU_2023_AnnouncementToolkit

    2023-2027 Silver BFU Award Seal image files:  https://bit.ly/BFU_Silver_2023

    We love to showcase our new and renewing Bicycle Friendly Universities on the League's blog and social media platforms! To help us highlight your campus as a Bicycle Friendly University, we invite you to submit photos and quotes about bicycling on your campus through our BFU Story Form!

    In the coming weeks, detailed feedback on your application will be sent via email and you will receive a Bicycle Friendly University award letter and certificate in the mail. If you would like to order additional materials to promote your BFU designation, please visit our online store here.

    Your award designation is good for four years, through 2027, after which time you will be reminded to renew. You are welcome to renew before then if your campus makes considerable improvements and would like to be considered for a higher designation.

    Congratulations again on your efforts, and I look forward to our continued work!

    Best,

    Amelia Neptune
    Director, Bicycle Friendly America
    League of American Bicyclists

  10. Weekly Update: Abandoned bicycles, new staff

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Big news of last week is the abandoned bikes. Bike Project folk and I were able to take an inventory of the bikes that are available and given the number of bikes—fewest in my tenure!—we are not partnering with Working Bikes this year. I communicated as much last week and no hard feelings. If anything, they’re happy to hear we have less bike waste—and they would know, they’ve got a 3 story building full of bikes.

    This week we have a couple new staff members starting here. We’ll do some off-hours training with them.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 40
    Sales: $1,030.50
    Memberships: 18 for $540

    Tires/tubes: 27 for $212

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  11. Unclaimed abandoned bicycles donated to the Campus Bike Center

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles
    Campus Bike Center

    Following the deadline day to claim impounded bicycles, Sarthak Prasad reached out to Jake Benjamin, campus bike center coordinator, to inform that these bicycles are now considered donated to the Campus Bike Center and the Bike Project of Urbana-Champaign. See the email below:

    Hi Jake,

    The deadline to claim impounded bicycles have passed, so you can start checking the bicycles in the barn now. These bicycles are now considered donated to the Campus Bike Center and the Bike Project. I have the serial number information for almost all of those bicycles in the spreadsheet as well. We had about 240ish bicycles to start with and 24 bicycles were returned this year.

    Thank you,

    Sarthak

  13. Weekly Update: Busy times, Light the Night, abandoned bikes

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center
    Light the Night
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    All, Pretty standard week. Busy with some wait time on stands/repairs most days. Had a Build-a-Bike completed—always a good thing. My team and I did Light the Night on Tuesday at the Ikenberry Quad area. First time in a new location always gets us some looks and questions. Not as busy as we hoped but again, it’s not yet familiar to folks. No word yet on numbers. 

    We were dangerously overloaded on scrap by Friday, but Todd pick it up over the weekend—always appreciated.

    This week I’ll do inventory of the abandoned bikes to see what’s worth keeping. Of note: Easily the fewest abandoned bikes in my tenure. I think my first year there were over 500 bikes left over. Maybe bike shares are really helping that issue (and maybe creating others)?

    This week I’ll have two new staffers start. It’s apparently midterms, so reinforcements are paramount.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 62
    Sales: $1,122.50
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $50
    Memberships: 20 for $600
    Tires/tubes: 26 for $192

    Thanks!

    Jacob Benjamin
    Coordinator -- Campus Bike Center

  14. Deadline passed, final number of bicycles returned

    Associated Project(s): 
    Collection and Donation of Abandoned Bicycles

    The period to reclaim impounded bicycles from summer 2023 has now passed. We had impounded about 240 bicycles in the summer and we returned 24 bicycles! That is a 10% reclamation rate, as compared to 5% in 2022. This was the least number of abandoned bicycles impounded ever on campus!

    All of the unclaimed bicycles are now considered donated. Sarthak Prasad will reach out to Campus Bike Center to let them know that they can start removing these bicycles. Since there are only about 200 unclaimed bicycles, we may not donate them to Working Bikes this year.

  15. Invites sent to students

    Associated Project(s): 
    Learn How to Ride a Bicycle and Bike Rodeo

    An invite was sent to 12 students to register to participate in the first ever "Learn How to Ride" class. See the email below:

    Hello,

    Hope you are doing well. We have rescheduled the Learn How to Ride a bike class to October 7, 2023! Please respond to this email or register before Friday, September 29, 2023!

    Thank you for filling out the Bike Class Form on the Bike at Illinois website. You had mentioned that you would like to take a “Learn How to Ride” class. The University of Illinois is organizing a “Learn How to Ride” class on Saturday, October 7, 2023 from 11 am to 1:30 pm. Please register to participate in this class: https://shorturl.at/gyBQX

    This is the first time we are going to organize a class such as this, so please make sure to arrive on time if you are able to participate. This class will be available to you free of cost. The University is covering the cost for contracting the two local League Cycling Instructors to teach this class, the equipment, and logistics to organize this class.

    The class will take place at the basketball courts adjacent to the Volleyball courts at the intersection of Stadium Dr and Oak St (opposite to the Nuclear Physics Laboratory). We will provide bicycles for this class, but if you already have a bicycle, please bring it for fitting.

    Please fill out the form at your earliest convenience, and let me know if you have any questions. Thank you,
    Sarthak

  17. Weekly Update: Bike to Work Day, Light the Night

    Associated Project(s): 
    Campus Bike Center

    All, I was out sick all last week with some combination of flu/cold/sinus infection. My staff handled operations in my absence. However, there were some issues tracking visit numbers, unfortunately.

    Last Thursday was Bike To Work Day. Some very awesome people stepped up and filled in for me. Sounds like it was a banner year! Congrats to all involved.

    Tomorrow evening is Light The Night. We’ll be hosting at a different location this year. Should be a better spot for folks to get their lights.

    We were inundated with donations last week. I’ll bring in staff off-hours to help scrap the junk bikes and reorganize this week. Hopefully we’ll have our space in better shape by our open hours on Wednesday.

    The numbers:

    Visitors: 8*
    Sales: $1,242.50
    Bikes (refurb): 2 for $215
    Bikes (B-a-B): 1 for $40
    Memberships: 17 for $510
    Tires/tubes: 9 for $55

    *See above issue with visit numbers.

    Jacob Benjamin
    Campus Bike Center Coordinator

  20. Noteworthy at Illinois: Bike at Illinois mention

    Associated Project(s): 
    Bike at Illinois Website and Campaign
    C-U Bike to Work Day
    Light the Night
    Noteworthy
     
     


     

    Welcome to a new year at Illinois

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    We've opened our semester with all the energy and excitement a new academic year deserves. By watching this short video, you'll see we are already meeting plenty of new faces.

    I am so grateful to have you as part of our Illinois family. Because, as we all know, the best parts of any new journey are the people who share it with you.

    Robert J. Jones, Chancellor

    Chancellor Jones

    		  


     

    students at memorial stadium

    Meet the Illinois family

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    The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign welcomed a record-breaking class of students for the 2023-24 academic year. Representing excellence at scale, the total student enrollment is 56,403.

    By the numbers:

    • 8,325 new freshmen
    • 74% in-state students, the largest number since 2006
    • 22% from underrepresented groups
    • 24% first-generation college students
    • 6,304 new graduate students, one of the largest group of new graduate students in history
    • 32% increase in new certificate students
    		  


     

    foellinger auditorium

    Explore our university

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    Discovering our campus: A new academic year means new opportunities to explore.

    Experiencing game day: Illinois returns to Memorial Stadium for its Big Ten opener against Penn State on Saturday. 

    Visiting the Illini Union: A new exhibition at the Illini Union Art Gallery is featuring photographs of artwork from the Mexican Muralism movement. 

    Watching live performance: Krannert Center for the Performing Arts showcases national and international artists as well as university student performances in music, theater, dance and more. 

    Exploring Krannert Art Museum: The university is home to the second-largest general fine art museum in the state. 

    Biking at Illinois: Illinois is a leader in sustainability and active transportation. Celebrate C-U Bike Month during September.

    		  


     

    orange fountain

    Get ready for Illinois Homecoming

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    It's one of the best weeks of the year. Whether you’ve lived here for years or are returning for the first time, Illinois Homecoming is the perfect time to explore our university community.

    Mark your calendars for Oct. 15-21, with more details coming soon.

    		  


     

    student with research project

    Discover Illinois innovation

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    Inspiring discovery: In 30 seconds, watch how Illinois is a world-class leader in research, teaching and public engagement. 

    Seeing humanities in action: Undergraduate humanities scholars are pursuing community engagement opportunities within the Champaign-Urbana community.

    Bringing cells to life: Researchers, policymakers and Minecraft players can look forward to the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology’s newest research center. 

    Leading autonomous construction: The university will be the site of a new research center focused on the most pressing questions related to autonomous construction technologies.

    Propelling ag education: Illinois will collaborate with six community college agricultural technology programs to design and conduct a course and internship program for students.  

    		  


     

    alma mater statue

    Stay connected with Illinois 

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    Missing campus: Watch live from the Main Quad or at the Alma Mater statue.

    Following news at Illinois: Stay up-to-date on the latest Illinois news.

    Applying to Illinois: Know an aspiring Illini? Applications for admission are now open.

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