The SSC bike parking award is for $225,000 to install approximately 1,000 new bike parking spaces on existing concrete throughout campus. 

The SSC and the Illini Union agreed to support improvements at the southwest corner of the Illini Union, where there are existing “donut-hole” bike racks.  These will be removed over the summer and replaced with stainless steel U-loops.  Additionally, the F&S Grounds division has agreed to plant an additional tree in that area, which will increase shading for the bike parking.

Through Champaign County Bikes, the University has acquired 22 Varsity Bicycle Racks (which will hold a total of 44 bicycles) from Park-a-Bike in order to run a year-long pilot test of the racks. 10 of these racks will be installed for the year near the Union and the remaining 12 will be distributed in various high-visibility locations on and near campus, to be determined.

The graduate student working on sketches for the Campus Bicycle Network improvements has completed a majority of the campus owned pathways.  In some cases, this has included site visits to specific areas, with the Transportation Coordinator and the Landscape Architect for campus.

The SSC-supported Bike Sharing Feasibility Study student intern held a review meeting with the Bike Sharing Steering Committee.  The report is substantially complete and will be available this summer.  As part of the Feasibility Study, F&S released a bike sharing survey to the campus and surrounding community in late March, and accepted responses throughout April. The Survey received 1,168 responses from students, staff, faculty, retirees, visitors and members of the community. F&S is working with the UI Bikes section of Engineering 315, Learning in the Community (LINC) course, to analyze the data from the survey responses. Students from the LINC course also conducted a focus group with undergraduate students in conjunction with the survey in order to dive deeper into the topic of bike sharing with focus group participants.

In preparation for the third annual C-U Bike to Work Day (BTWD), staff organized fundraising, publicity, volunteers, bike stations’ supplies, registration, and riders’ incentives. The University led the efforts to organize BTWD this year, in partnership with local governments and other agencies. BTWD is an opportunity to encourage and support new bicycle commuters across C-U, including students, staff and faculty of the University, in an effort to create a mode shift toward more bike commuting and less automobile commuting.

SSC granted a funding request from the Campus Bike Project (CBP) which will allow the current part-time hours of the CBP shop manager, a University employee reporting directly to F&S, to be expanded to full-time. The grant also includes a small stipend for part-time student employees to help staff the CBP.  Sustainability Staff have been working with CBP representatives to develop the position description and conduct a job search, which attracted over 30 applications. The search committee, which included sustainability staff from F&S, as well as Bike Project volunteers and members, is currently in the process of narrowing the pool down to select a qualified candidate.

IGBA held an e-waste recycling event on campus and in the research park.

F&S provided recycling containers for the Illinois Marathon.

Sustainability Staff helped the Campus Bike Project (CBP) to prep 350 old, abandoned bicycles from last year’s campus-wide cleanup in order to donate them to an organization, Working Bikes, which will refurbish the bicycles and ship them to Uganda to be donated to those in need of affordable transportation. Staff and CBP volunteers worked for over 12 hours to prep the bikes and over 4 hours to load them onto a truck to be taken to Working Bikes’ Chicago location.   The Parking Department was also involved, as the timing of the donation was critical in order to clear out Parking’s warehouse to make room for this year’s campus-wide cleanup of abandoned bicycles. 

The iCAP Portal has been approved for support from the Office of Sustainability/Chancellor, and construction of the portal is under development.  Initial entry screens have been created and were shared at the iCAP Forum on April 16.  The backend database will be developed over the summer 2012. 

The SSC supported “Weatherization” project is coming to its conclusion.  The six RSO teams that participated in this program have submitted their reports to the Weatherization intern, and the F&S Maintenance Division has identified the costs of the recommended improvements.  These will be summarized and implemented after the Spring 2012 semester.

The projects committee in the US Green Building Council student chapter is working on a "Green Your Dorm" project encouraging dorms to save energy and water. The SSC has approved funding to put individual metering in dorms. The USGBC chapter made the suggestion that Ikenberry Commons resdence halls be the first to receive meter upgrades.

The SSC awarded funding for Solar at the ECE North Campus Parking Deck project and the Conceptualization phase for Solar at KCPA.

We participated in meeting with representatives from Columbia, Missouri about their transit goals.  Articles were written about the visit: http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2012/mar/13/gold-standard/, http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2012/03/13/final-bus-trip/, and http://wjf.im/xkmY5f.

We also provided information to Arizona State University about our bike registration system and intentions.

Spoke with Jeff Weaver at Property Accounting about developing an online system where departments can post furniture and equipment they intend to relinquish, and other departments can choose to get that item directly from the current location, rather than send the item to Surplus and get it picked up from Surplus.

Staff answered questions from DCEO about the FSCRAP grant, in cooperation with University Grants and Contracts.  Additionally, staff provided detailed responses to inquiries from students about the status of the project.