The final version of a campus bike and pedestrian plan, introduced in a resolution to Student Senate Monday, features a path for cyclists, a no-wheels campus mall and a wired bike tracking program.

Senate will vote on whether to support the plan at its next meeting, Monday.

The bike project is up for consideration as another chapter of Eau Claire’s 20-year Master Plan, which lays out long-term goals for the
university.

Senate Student Office of Sustainability Director Emy Marier said the  bike and pedestrian plan is a set of long-term ideas on how to make campus better for bikes and pedestrians.

“It’s aimed at recognizing biking as a true form of transportation,” Marier said. “And that comes with regulation.”

The details
The plan calls for a no-wheels campus mall coupled with a bike loop carved out along Garfield Avenue and circling lower campus.

Covered bike parking will be constructed along the bike loop, under the plan. But students won’t be allowed to store bikes for long periods under covered parking, so the university will monitor which bikes are left untouched for days and which ones are in use.

Bob Eierman, Eau Claire chemistry professor and member of the bike and pedestrian project planning team said the university will need to enforce temporary bike parking under covered racks. Which means someone will need to check parking stalls for abandoned bikes.

If someone parks their bike in the wrong spot and doesn’t claim it, the university will cut the lock and sell the bike through the campus Surplus Store.

“They sell crap all the time, we have a way to get rid of (abandoned bikes),” Eierman said.

“Now this is getting pretty cold, this is nasty business, this is really going to piss people off, especially if it’s a decent bike.”

University Police currently collect and hold abandoned bikes. Police are required to store these bikes for 90 days before passing them off to surplus which sells them.

The University Parking and Transportation office attaches twist ties with a 30-day impound warning to bikes with flat tires, rust and other signs of stagnation in the summer.

If no one claims the bikes in 30 days, Parking and Transportation passes them to the Surplus Store too.

“If you don’t want your bike we’ll sell it. That’s what happens to impounded bikes, they get sold,” Eierman said. “Here’s the first thing, we’d rather not have a bunch of stored bikes in this brand-new facility that costs thousands and thousands of dollars.”

Eierman said the bike and pedestrian plan will include a bike registration program so the university knows which bikes belong to each student.

If someone leaves their bike at a covered parking stall, Eau Claire can send an email or make a phone call and ask the student to remove their bike.

Eau Claire will issue active electronic spoke tracers that ping off scanners placed at campus entry points, like the Haas side of the footbridge.

These scanners will track how many times each student rides their bike to campus. Eierman said the university will use this data to assign incentives like bike helmet giveaways and free food based on how many times a student bikes to class.

But that means the university can also use that data to track length of rides, high-traffic bike times and high-traffic areas of campus, Eierman said.

“The only valid uses I can see for it is the incentive program and for tracking bike usage,” Eierman said. “Who actually is going to take the time to go look for (bike usage data).”

But he said he’s not sure who would legally own and access that data.

“The other thing is would you sell that data?” Eierman said. “I think there’s a huge set of issues there.”

MOVING FORWARD

The plan was introduced to Senate as a resolution, which shows student support of the plan. Resolutions are normally introduced and voted on in one meeting, but Senate tabled the plan after a debate.

The university doesn’t need Senate to approve the project before it moves forward, but if Senate votes the project down on Monday, it shows that students don’t support the bike plan.

If Senate doesn’t approve the project, other committees, like the Master Plan Committee, which make binding decisions to add the project would be less inclined to sign off.

And if even if each decision-making university body approves the plan, nothing will happen right away.

That’s because this project doesn’t outline a funding structure — it needs to piggyback other Master Plan projects and grant money injections to be financed to full completion, Eierman said.

Jeremy Gragert of the Chippewa Valley Transit Alliance said, during Student Senate’s meeting, he was disappointed the university didn’t engage the community during the plan’s drafting process.

Gragert said parts of the bike and pedestrian plan like the registration program and the dismount zone in the campus mall won’t stick with students.

“I think those policy responses come from previous failures in engineering the campus mall,” Gragert said. “We have no idea who designed it. They’re not going to put their name on it, I’ll tell you that. They’d be ashamed of themselves.”

The plan would also establish a university bike and pedestrian committee, Eierman said, which could advocate for bike and pedestrian transportation when pieces of Master Plan construction begin.

“Most of what we’re going to tap in to is the continuing evolution of campus which is going to happen anyway,” Eierman said. “Over a generation of change we’ll get to the point where we’re a mature bike and pedestrian-friendly campus.”