Pedestrians are starting to look both ways before crossing a one-way street. More people are wearing their jeans with the right pant leg rolled up to the knee, and it’s getting harder to find a signpost without something locked on it. A bicycling epidemic is breaking out in New York City and NYU is at the center of it.
Thanks to a few dedicated students and lots of help, everyone at NYU who has an N-number and an NYUCard will be able to feel the rush that comes from cruising down Bleecker Street on two wheels. Today the NYU Bike Share Pilot Program is beginning to hold its first required safety workshops, and participants will be able to start checking out bikes next week. This makes NYU’s bike share the first permanent bike sharing program in New York City.
The idea behind bike sharing is simple; participants take a bike from point A, use it to get to point B and leave it at point B. With enough stations, bike sharing can effectively supplement metropolitan transportation systems. As a pilot program, the bike share has only two locations: the Green House dorm at 7th Street and the bike parking lot behind Tisch Hall. With support from Residential Education and more funding from the university, perhaps we can see stations at residence halls such as Gramercy Green, 26th Street or Lafayette.
The birth of the NYU bike share proves that students can work with the administration to change this university. Lindsi Seegmiller and Julia Ehrman saw the problems: polluted streets, congestion, stressed-out commuters. Finding the solution in their love for biking, the CAS students teamed up with Tim McNerney and Jen Refat, fellow bike enthusiasts and graduate students in the Tisch School of the Arts Interactive Telecommunications Program. Together, they began to create a plan for an NYU bike share.
Biking is a fun way to get around without pumping greenhouse gases into the air or war-laden oil into a tank. It’s cheap, it’s easy and it’s just as fast as the subway. Most people avoid biking because they think it isn’t safe or that their bike will get stolen. Although more bike lanes would make the streets safer, those who exercise caution have little threat of getting injured. When bikes are locked properly, the risk of theft decreases.
Students who are interested in reducing their impact on the environment often get discouraged when they come up against big problems such as global warming and rising sea levels. Sometimes it seems like no matter what anyone does, it won’t make a difference. Biking proves that this isn’t true. Bikers commute in a way that reduces pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, while getting exercise and having fun. By participating in the bike share, students are moving toward a more progressive, environmentally friendly way of living.
Seegmiller, Ehrman, McNerney and Refat are pioneering a new wave of collegiate activism. NYU’s Sustainability Task Force awarded grant money to the bike share project, and the students started on the long path of endless meetings and hours of designing. Seegmiller and Ehrman coordinated the project while McNerney and Refat innovated the new tech system that it runs on. They did this without getting anything in return except the promise that more people will have more chances to bike.
Right now, NYU students are dependent on buses that eat up diesel fuel and pollute the air. NYU can remedy this with a strong bike-sharing program. A beginning fleet of 30 bikes is great, but that is hardly adequate for a school of 50,000 students. If NYU is to be taken seriously as an institution that leads the way in collegiate sustainability, it will have to invest in this bike share and support its expansion.
Maggie Craig is the copresident of Earth Matters and is a member of WSN’s editorial board. E-mail responses to opinion@nyunews.com.
Washington Square News > Opinion > Columnists
New bike program a good step toward greener commute
Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Updated: Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Be the first to comment on this article!