TIGER TV ONLINE REPORTER
Bike Week is here again to celebrate bikes and promote new initiatives to improve the campus biking experience.
Bike Week was once part of safety week, but is now held separately to focus on celebrating biking in general with scheduled rides throughout the week.
The week also promotes safe and correct ways to ride around campus with events focusing on safety and education. Some events include a bike repair workshop and a bike auction where students can talk to Gary Graham, Director of Parking, Traffic and Transportation, Jason Soileau, Facility Development assistant director, and Brad Silva, Facility Development manager about biking related issues.
“There’s a lot to be excited about,” Moshe Cohen, a mathematics graduate student, member of Baton Rouge Advocates for Safe Streets and the auctioneer for Wednesday’s bike auction said. “We’re hoping at the bike auction to have students communicate their reactions to all bike infrastructures.”
The bike auction on Wednesday will allow students to bid on all bikes that have been impounded for 90 days by the Office of Parking, Traffic and Transportation, starting at $10.
“I came up with idea in 2006 to draw attention to the bike auction when I noticed mostly non-LSU students were there,” Cohen said. He also said he wanted the bikes to go back into student hands.
A new part of the auction will be a campaign for campus bike-riders to send pre-printed postcards to LSU System President John Lombardi encouraging him not to raise student fees.
“This is an opportunity for students who don’t have a car and whose bikes are a necessity,” Cohen said.
Campus Crawl is a central ride that took place Monday. The event was designed to encourage occasional bikers to ride with those who are more experienced so they can learn the rules of the road and ride with confidence.
“The idea isn’t just spreading rules but transferring knowledge from one bicyclist to another,” Cohen said.
An unofficial committee comprised of all kinds of students brainstormed all the bicycling related events.
New programs and initiatives for campus bicycling include the commute home program, which encourages bicyclists who live near each other to bike home together for increased safety and visibility.
Phase two of the Easy Streets initiatives will include bike stripes painted onto campus roads. Seven new bike rack hubs will be installed along with pumps that will be paid for by money from last year’s auction.
On a larger scale, the League of American Bicyclists has named Baton Rouge a bicycle friendly community, which serves as a reminder of the reasons for Bike Week.
“It’s really a way for the bigger biking community to get to know each other,” Smith said.
