Sustainability means less cars and more free bikes

The University of Louisville makes new efforts to get students and staff on bikes for a greener campus

By Genevieve Mills–

This year introduces the University of Louisville’s Earn-A-Bike program. This program is open to students, faculty, and staff, and is an outgrowth of U of L’s Climate Action Plan. Participants in this program have volunteered to give up their parking permits for two years, and in return have received a $400 voucher good for any of three big bike businesses: Bike Couriers Bike Shop, Scheller’s Fitness & Cycling, Vic’s Classic Bikes. With these vouchers, they’ll buy bikes, helmets, a lock, and other equipment to help make U of L a greener campus.

“The goal of this program is to get people out of pollution-causing cars and onto bicycles,” says Justin Mog, assistant to the provost for sustainability initiatives. “Besides reducing pollution, traffic congestion and parking pressures, we want to change mindsets. We want to reward people for doing the right thing, encourage them to be more active and save them money.”And biking will be easier than ever this year, as the Sustainability Council installed 66 new bike racks around campus this August, along with five Bike Fix-It stations. There’s also the new Bike-Share program, where anyone with a U of L ID can head to the SAC gym and rent a bike and equipment for the day. Students and staff can use these free rentals on one of the new bike lanes that were added to Cardinal Boulevard between Brook and Second Street this summer. The Sustainability Council is doing as much as it can to make U of L a bike-friendly campus.

Applications for the Earn-A-Bike program closed August 24th, but will reopen for 2013 in late spring or early summer. If you’re interested in this or the other sustainability programs, head to louisville.edu/sustainability.

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Photos: Rae Hodge/The Louisville Cardinal