If you biked to class in your college days (or still do), you understand what makes the campus commute easy and what makes it difficult. On a basic level, cyclists need access to bike racks for secure parking during class and, most importantly, safe routes to ride between classrooms and the dorms.
Some colleges, however, go above and beyond. Each year, the League of American Bicyclists shouts out those schools that have gone the extra mile for bike accessibility—be that making notable safety upgrades or forming initiatives to get more students on bikes—with its Bicycle-Friendly University Awards. Forty-five schools, ranging from small liberal-arts colleges to large, public universities, received honors in the 2018 rankings, announced this month.
The League rates schools from bronze to platinum, though one can always move up in the rankings by doing more. Amelia Neptune, a program director at the League, explained that colleges are judged based on the “Five E’s”: engineering (designing a safe bike network), education (incorporating bikes into the classroom), encouragement (motivating students to bike with programs and incentives), enforcement (ensuring riders are protected on the road), and evaluation (forming committees to improve cycling on campus).
Here are the top seven colleges in the 2018 rankings. See if your alma mater made the cut this year, or if it has a place on the all-time list.
- University of Kentucky
- University of Maryland, College Park
- Harvard University
- Dickinson College
- University of Utah
- University of Vermont
- University of Washington
“What I like about these awards is that it doesn’t matter how big, small, urban, or rural the campuses are,” said Neptune, who oversaw bike safety initiatives at the University of Illinois before joining the League in 2013. “We love seeing the creative ways the schools are promoting biking and making safer, healthier environments to do it.”
This year, Neptune said, the University of Kentucky stood out due to the creative incentives it offers students and faculty members. For example, if an employee opts out of a parking pass for the school year, he or she is offered a free bike-share membership or $200 to spend at a local bike shop. Kentucky also granted students who didn’t bring cars to school free access to bike rentals.
Another reason Kentucky performed so well is that it hired a full-time coordinator to oversee the school’s support for cycling. “Most colleges just make bike safety a pet project, but then no significant improvements happen,” Neptune said. “Having someone who’s entirely focused on improving bike accessibility on campus is key to really improving the environment.”
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Neptune also highlighted Dickinson College, despite it having only 2,000 students on its small, rural Pennsylvania campus. Since the town isn’t large enough to support a bike-share system, the school acquired a large fleet of bikes that it rents out to students each semester. It also opened an on-campus bike shop to service riders’ needs.
“They’ve made a biking culture where there wasn’t really one before,” Neptune said. Dickinson also offers a pretty sweet group ride: Once a week, students and staff will bike to a nearby farm for a potluck dinner made from fresh produce.
Colleges can now apply to the 2019 awards, which are open through August 22 of next year. The application requirements are pretty intensive, but Neptune said that often forces colleges to assess their campuses and make improvements where they hadn’t thought to before.
“Every school can be a little less car-focused and a little more bike-supportive,” Neptune said.
Only five colleges have ever earned a platinum rating from the League, a distinction each has held for several years. They are Stanford University; the University of California, Davis; Colorado State University; the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; and Portland State University.
Hailey first got hooked on running news as an intern with Running Times, and now she reports on elite runners and cyclists, feel-good stories, and training pieces for Runner's World and Bicycling magazines.
