The Transportation SWATeam had their first meeting of the semester. They discussed their formal recommendation for a new mode share study and opportunities for expansion of Green Fleet certification to new campus fleets.

The Transportation SWATeam discussed the opportunities, challenges, and feasibility of campus fleet car-sharing to reduce emissions from the campus fleet. They also discussed air travel offsets

Hello Transportation SWATeam members,

Thank you again for your willingness to help our campus achieve the Climate Leadership Commitments.  There is great value provided by the bi-weekly meetings of student, faculty, and staff representatives evaluating our progress and recommending additional actions campus units could take.

The following is a list of current activities I am aware of, and suggestions I have about useful next steps.  I am happy to follow up with you on any of these, as needed.

Thank you very much,

~Morgan

Transportation

1. EV analysis for department’s assigned vehicles – Hursh Hazari worked with Pete Varney’s data to evaluate the possibility of replacing some fleet vehicles with EVs.  https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/use-electric-vehicles-ev-campus
2. Pete Varney has established the F&S fleet as a certified green fleet.  Pete, do you create an annual report for the status of that which you can share?  If not, can you provide an update to the SWATeam and to me? 
3. Last year the SWATeam discussed encouraging additional campus units to get certified as green fleets.  Your team could submit a recommendation for another unit (or more than one) to pursue that certification. 
4. New EV Chargers – Scott Willenbrock is working on one at the Illini Union + Phil Krein is interested in getting more Type 1 chargers for the North Campus Parking Deck.
5. Potential EV Study – At the Oct. 11 Workshop for the Living Lab research connections to iCAP, there will be seed funding offered and the study for transitioning to EVs could collect and use data on campus vehicle use.  Pete has example data, which could be used to support the request for seed funding, which could then possibly fund data collection for the study.
6. We do not yet have new air travel emission data.  iSEE is working on creating a virtual storeroom to offer carbon offsets to campus units to voluntarily buy air travel offsets.  The storeroom has funding for the first 10,000 offsets, but I understand there was a hurdle on selecting appropriate offsets with additionality.  I recommend asking Ben McCall and Scott Willenbrock about it.
7. A new Mode split survey is needed as soon as possible.  Lily Wilcock intends to bring this as an item for discussion.  We would appreciate it if you would help define the survey questions, and then iSEE can help distribute the survey to get updated figures. 
8. Bike Plan – I suggest you ask Stacey DeLorenzo to join one of your meetings to give an overview of the status of the Bike Plan infrastructure upgrades.
9. Lily has funding for a Bike at Illinois website, which Creative Services will develop in the winter and spring months this fiscal year. 
10. Lily has worked with MTD to offer bus tours to show campus staff how to use the MTD.  We teach all our new student how to ride, but none of the new employees get the personal introduction.  These tours are very successful, when they are organized with a specific department or location. 
11. Bike Parking – there is a significant capacity issue, which is noticeable just by looking around campus, especially during class hours in the core area.  Lily has a new website that she can show you, and there is an upcoming Bike Census, which your team members should help with.
12. Bike Sharing – a handful of dockless bike sharing companies are wanting to come to town/campus.  To manage their impacts (imagine bikes in the boneyard) they will be required to obtain city permits.  Lily is asking the SSC to use the funds they allocated to bike sharing for additional bike parking areas in the heart of campus.
13. MCORE – this project has several impacts on multi-modal transportation.  You can learn more at http://www.mcoreproject.com/project-construction-updates.

Meeting Minutes 4/21/17

In attendance:

Ximing Cai

Pete Varney

Brian Farber

Yanfeng Ouyang

Summary:

This meeting serve to continue discussion on campus fleet, bike parking, and campus parking. Also, Ximing Cai was introduced to the team.

Topics:

Discussion on Campus Fleet

Pete led a discussion on campus fleet efforts. He stated that converting campus fleet to EVs and CNG vehicles would have a large effect on campus emissions, and that campus utility is interested in learning about electric vehicles, but there are certain obstacles to converting campus fleet. First it would cost about half a million dollars or more. These costs are largely attribute to building infrastructure for CNG refueling systems. In addition, campus fleet vehicles for Facilities and Services as well as housing do not drive very far, so the fuel savings would be small. However, converting campus fleet would be practical as the vehicles do not travel off campus, meaning there will be no inconvenience in refueling the vehicles.

Bike Parking

We continued our discussion on bike parking from the last meeting. One of our concerns, given the cost of the permits, is security. Anyone who is paying for a permit must be certain that there bike is secure. We might want to have security cameras.

Parking

We discussed efforts to encourage less driving through parking incentives. Pete suggested having a passenger-car-free campus zone by placing parking outside of certain zones of campus. This idea was well received by the group and generally liked. However, we discussed challenges to any parking changes. We discussed specific proposals to adjust parking prices, shown here:

-          Try to price people out of parking and mitigate this by reducing the price at other locations

-          Allow flexible payment in percentage of salary

-          Have and “auction” in which whoever pays the largest percent of their salary gets the closest location.

-          Remove or lift parking cap so that wealthier parkers pay more and thus provide more revenue

-          Have a private company raise rates on parking

Then, we discussed challenges to these proposals:

-          Parking is important to unions – any changes may result in strikes or political conflict

-          The sentiment of Parking and Campus master plan does not necessarily agree with people parking farther away – an objective that would be achieved through a passenger-car-free zone

-          Hiring private company likely not a good idea – their primary motivation is profit

-          City of Champaign changed parking ordinances so that spaces at churches, fraternities, etc, decrease

Our next meeting is TBD.

3/3/17

Summary: This meeting served to update and refocus the team, as well as to further discuss Lily Wilcox’s suggestion for her bike-cage recommendation.

In attendance:

Josh Feldman

Morgan Johnston

Brian Farber

Pete Varney

Lily Wilcox - Active Transportation Coordinator

Topics Covered:

New IWG chair – Ximing Cai

Ben McCall has stepped down as the iCAP working group chair and will be replaced by Ximing Cai, who will start on March 1st. Morgan Johnston will serve as the interim chair until then. Ximing wants to tie iSEE to other campus sustainability programs better, and wants faculty outside of iSEE more involved.

IWG wants recommendations

The iCAP working group is asking for feedback as to how well recommendations are working from our perspective. They hope to have a summary for recommendations by May. For instance, you might note that it is hard to have faculty engagement, or that the SWATeam isn’t getting enough feedback. If you have suggestions you would like IWG to hear, email Morgan Johnston.

Bike Parking Cage proposal

Last semester, Lily Wilcox introduced a suggestion to have secure cages for bike storage in all new parking structures. Those who would like to use these structures would pay for a permit. The team has not yet decided to agree completely on the proposal as we are still working out how to address some specific concerns.

The most important concern is cost. These cages are expected to cost approximately $60,000, and will be in use for the 30-50 year lifespan of the parking structure. Morgan noted that these cages would likely be in high demand, so we could charge upwards of $85-$100 per year for a permit, similar to universities like Ohio State and Minnesota.

Additionally, we discussed who the primary customers would be. Likely, the primary buyers would be day-riders and some students. Morgan suggested that we talk to campus recreation about the idea as well.

Finally, we discussed some of the implementation challenges of the proposal. Brian mentioned that having bike riders in a parking garage create a safety hazard as cars may not be aware of or expect bike riders. Furthermore, any malfunction of the card-swipe system would be a huge inconvenience for anyone who needs to retrieve their bike.

Overall, we have not yet formally agreed to go ahead with the recommendation but will continue to discuss it until we work out these issues.

Next Meeting

Our next meeting will be Thursday, March 16 at 1pm. This meeting will take place on Thursday so as to not be right before spring break.