Making OSU a More Bike Friendly Campus

This project is an outcome of a semester-long multidisciplinary course, which focuses on sustainability with community needs in mind and with shared vision, resources, and stewardship. For this project, Ohio State as a bicycle-friendly campus, we will be researching the feasibility and benefits of pursuing a higher degree of accreditation from the League of American Bicyclists (LAB). The LAB awards universities, who apply, a bike friendly status level based on their evaluation of the campus’ bicycling infrastructure, education, encouragement of bicycling and enforcement of the rules. We hope to help Ohio State, through community- and service-based research and learning, a conceivable path toward receiving a gold level accreditation which would be a substantial increase from Ohio State's current bronze level status. There are many benefits that come along with facilitating more bicycle-friendly campus like biking as an emission-free source of transportation that has health benefits and can ease the stress of a car crowded campus. The standardization of rules across campus will be important to this transition as motorists and bicyclists alike grasp the changes and understand new rules. There are common practice such as bike lanes, educational courses, and bicycle police or enforcement patrol that many universities have employed. However, there will be challenges associated with this; there is existing infrastructure we must work around as well as the monetary costs of implementing these changes and being sure that more students and faculty are going to adopt biking as a means of transportation. To combat these difficulties, we will perform a cost-benefit analysis to show whether these investments will pay off and benchmark other campuses that have already achieved high standards of bicycle-friendly campuses. Additionally, we will research how the changes to more bicycle-friendly campus have affected these other campuses and what we can learn from their experiences as to not make the same mistakes or more smoothly transition. The intended audience for our study would be anyone who wishes to become a biker and is seeking more bicycle-friendly areas to ride. Representatives from other universities who are looking to make their campus more bike friendly or people from other or our own community who desire to make their area more bicycle friendly should find interest in our research. Finally, anyone interested in seeing Ohio State's campus or any university campus in the country to become more bike friendly or to adopt any sustainable and resilient means of living can be our audience.AUTHOR AFFILIATION: Colette Naples, undergraduate student, Ohio State School of Environment and Natural Resources, naples.30@osu.edu (Corresponding Author); Wuyang Hu, professor, Ohio State Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics; Myra Moss, professor, OSU Extension; Jackie Altschuler, undergraduate student, Ohio State School of Environment and Natural Resources; Nathan Frelka, undergraduate student, Ohio State School of Environment and Natural Resources; Quizhang Wu, undergraduate student, Ohio State School of Environment and Natural Resources; Reel Chaudahri, undergraduate student, Ohio State School of Environment and Natural ResourcesMaking Ohio State a more bicycle-friendly campus will benefit not only bikers around campus, but can also aid in decreasing emissions around campus and congestion caused by cars. This modification to campus will require planning for infrastructure, education, encouragement, and enforcement for bicyclist and motorists. Due to current infrastructure and monetary constraints, this must be carried out in the most cost-effective manner. We will present our research for a conceivable and practical path to become a gold-level accredited university, which would be an increase from Ohio State's current bronze-level status. We will also benchmark this from other universities who have already received higher level accreditations from the League of American Bicyclists