Pedal Pushing: Bike To Work Oct. 6-10
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Treats for bikes, riders Monday, Oct. 6: Library Mall fountain. The businesses include Budget Bicycle Center, Haack’s Cycle & Fitness, Madison Bagel & Baking Co., Trek Bicycle Store, Victor Allen’s Coffee & Tea and Whole Foods Market. Not every participating business will be at each location each day. City ordinance requires the registration of bicycles in Madison, and those who take advantage of the free goodies during Bike to Campus Week will be asked to register their bike with the city if they haven’t done so already. The registration costs $8 and is good for four years. Free T-shirts will be given to those who register their bikes. |
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Stefan Downing and Ed Sullivan embrace what they espouse: they ride their bikes to work.
And they want members of the UW–Madison community to do the same, or at least try it; hence, they have arranged some creative incentives for those who pedal to work or classes during the first full week of October.
Downing, a UW–Madison transportation planner, and Sullivan, the campus bicycle/pedestrian coordinator, are the energy behind Bike to Campus Week, scheduled for Oct. 6-10. The event is sponsored by Transportation Services in conjunction with several Madison-area businesses.
“It’s a fun event to get people interested in biking to work, even just once or twice a week,” says Sullivan, a graduate student in urban and regional planning who bikes 3-4 miles one way to campus each day. “We hope to get people thinking about alternative forms of transportation.”
Starting Monday, Oct. 6, and ending Friday, Oct. 10, free bike tune-ups will be offered by staff from Budget Bicycle Center, Haack’s Cycle & Fitness and Trek Bicycle Store. While their bikes are being tuned, bicyclists can munch on free food from Madison Bagel & Baking Co. and Whole Foods Market and sip free coffee from Victor Allen’s. WMAD Radio is also a sponsor.
Downing and Sullivan say Bike to Campus Week is also a reward for regular riders — approximately 25 percent of students and 10 percent to 12 percent of faculty and staff during good weather. Anyone who works or attends classes here knows that bike riders help ease the high demand for parking on campus. Bike ridership drops dramatically in the winter months, and several bike riders who participate in the bike flex-parking program through Transportation Services then drive to work.
The benefits of biking to work are many, from physical to mental to environmental and even to economic. Organizers stress that bicycling is a great form of exercise that reduces stress, eases air pollution and helps reduce the need for costly parking construction projects. Downing, who bikes about 2 1/2 miles one way to campus each day, says it costs the university between $10,000 and $20,000 on average for each new parking space it creates.
“If fewer people drive, it means we spend less on parking lots and more on academics,” Sullivan says.
To make the ride easier for bikers, Transportation Services is planning in the near future on repaving portions of the lakeshore path — specifically sections from Oxford Street to Picnic Point and near Willow Creek and the Biotron facility. The department is working with city officials to improve bike access to the university.
While many who bike to UW–Madison live fairly close to campus, Downing encourages those who live farther away to consider commuting by bicycle during Bike to Campus Week.
“I know some people who ride 15 miles one way to campus,” he says.