The Transportation SWATeam held their second meeting of the semester. They discussed how the a potential DIA Climate Action Plan could help achieve transportation iCAP goals. They also gave input on the student transportation survey that Professor Cidell is developing.
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The attached pdf shows the FY16 status update posters for iCAP objectives, shared by each SWATeam at the Campus Sustainability Celebration.”
Dr. Ximing Cai presented the attached presentation to the SWATeam members at the beginning of fall 2017.
The Transportation SWATeam had it's first meeting of the year. They discussed progress on the Transportation iCAP objectives, the status of related projects and proposals, and their priorities for the year. The team identified the following three areas on which they plan to focus in the coming meetings:
1. Exploring options for offsetting air travel emissions
2. Pursuing a comprehensive intermodal transit survey (one for students and one for faculty)
3. Assessing the feasibility of various options to reduce emissions from the campus fleet
The next meeting is on October 12th.
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
The charge letter was sent to FY18 SWATeam members, noting the SWATeams' responsibilities for the academic year.
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.
Meeting Minutes 4.3.17
In attendance:
Josh Feldman – SWATeam Clerk
Shuang Chen
Ximing Cai – iSEE director
Summary:
Due to poor scheduling, several members were not able to show up to the meeting. However, it was a good chance for Shuang Chen, a student who is working to update the iCAP portal objectives, to learn about the group. Also, the new iSEE director Ximing Cai was in attendance, and plans to attend future transportation SWATeam meetings.
Shuang had several questions to ask about the transportation SWATeam’s objectives. Josh answered the questions to the best of his knowledge and also wrote down the questions so that other members of the team could respond via email. Below are the questions.
- Can you provide a good overview of the bike plan and the fleet objectives?
- What is the main purpose of the UI fleet? Transportation? Construction?
- What is the exact amount/percentage of air travel emissions our campus produces?
- Which objective do you believe is the most important? Which has impressed you the most, or made the most progress?
- How does our bike plan compare with other universities’ bike plans?
Next meeting: Thursday 4/13 at 1pm
see file
see file
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.
see file
see file
Meeting Minutes 12-02-16
- Lily Wilcox proposes new recommendation to build bike parking cages in new parking decks. Proposal was submitted to iCap Working Group
- Concerns:
o Will faculty really use this? Most faculty drive to campus; will they use bikes to get from building to building?
o Price is $100 per semester per bike. Price seems too high, and we’re not sure it is worth it for a cheap bike. Also, we are not sure if students would be willing to pay that much. We must look at what pricing options we can come up with.
- Benefits:
o Overall, proposal was very well received by team.
o Other universities, such as the University of Wisconsin, have similar bike parking and Lily says they are happy with it.
o A survey showed that there is some student interest in $25 permit student pricing.
o This would help the problem of abandoned bikes on campus.
- Other Comments:
o This proposal would focus on new parking decks being built, but it would also be possible to retrofit old ones.
o Having shower rooms in the new parking decks would help so people do not have to be sweaty after riding their bike.
Spring meetings: Fridays at 1pm, about once every two weeks.
Meeting minutes 11/04/16
- Ankit showed us a video showing how some cities like Singapore are using tracking systems ( using cards) to track when people are getting on and getting off. This may improve the bus schedule. We could possibly using cards to track.
o MTD would have to put systems of the busses. Would require funds to implement this idea.
o Yangfeng mentioned some problems that could be associated with it. We must be careful if changing the bus schedule. Will MTD be open to the idea? It is quite some change.
- What we will talk to Ben about: one proposal on campus fleet, proposal on air travel to understand behavior, and parking proposal to change behavior. We will ask him what’s next, what’s on the agenda, and about further tasks to do. We need some more guidance.
Meeting Minutes 10-21-16
Attendees:
Josh Feldman
Claire Dondival
Topics:
Claire emailed Lance Schideman, professor who works for Illinois Sustainable Tech Center. He hasn’t gotten back to her yet, but Claire will try to see if he can possibly come to one of our future meetings.
Next Meeting:
11/4/16, Friday at 1pm in the iSEE conference room
Meeting minutes – 9/30/16
In Attendance:
Josh Feldman
Ankit Singhai
Yangfeng Ouyang
Topics:
Josh, Ankit, and Yangfeng collaborated to create the transportation poster for the campus sustainability celebration.
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.
The charge letter was sent to FY17 SWATeam members, noting that the clerks will be reaching out to help schedule meetings for the fall.
