Ball State students say they don't feel safe riding their bikes around campus. They're even willing to chip in $5 a year to create a separate lane for cyclists.
Almost 800 people responded to a recent survey about the campus bike experience, and half of them said they were willing to chip in with some type of annual fee for improved bike safety. Thirty percent of the people who responded to the portion of the survey said they wouldn't mind to pay $5 annually, and 28 percent said they wouldn't mind to pay $10.
"It's a beer at Scotty's. It's lunch at the Atrium, once a year," Vera Adams, urban planning instructor and co-creator of the survey, said.
If all of Ball State's more than 20,000 students paid $5 each year, that could mean $100,000 toward a new bike lane. If students paid $10 every year, that would mean $200,000 toward the proposed alternative lane.
The cost
Adams suggested placing bike lanes outside the sidewalk.
Kevin Kenyon, director of Facilities Planning and Management, said he's open to the idea.
"That's a different idea," he said. "I don't know. Looks are important. There would still be some pedestrian/ bicyclist interference."
However, the Facilities and Services department at University of Illinois, Adams' alma mater, doesn't think that's a good idea.
Morgan Johnston, sustainability and transportation coordinator at Illinois, discourages cutting bike paths off the streets.
"If there is not enough space within the curbs, then use sharrows instead," she said.
It would cost about $1,300 to place sharrow, or shared road, signs down McKinley Avenue from Bethel to Riverside avenues— $50 for each sign, which she suggests placing every 200 feet.
Jennifer Selby, a civil engineer in Urbana, Ill., said the signs let drivers know they'll be sharing the road.
"You put that in a vehicle lane that's not wide enough to be shared, but you know there's going to be bikes in the street," she said. "This is a location you'll see [cyclists], and there's a sign reinforcing that it's OK for bikes to be in the street."
The proposed $5 and $10 annual fees would cover only a small fraction of the estimated $422,400 it would cost to pave McKinley Avenue from the entrance of campus to Riverside Avenue, according to figures from Selby.
From the beginning
Freshman urban planning major Nathan Russell approached Adams in the fall to ask if she could help him put the survey together. He used the results for an assignment in English 104.
"I'm still trying to figure out what all this means and what we can do with it," he said. "To have your e-mail sent to everyone is a little nerve-wracking, but it's cool at the same time," he said.
Adams said the survey isn't comprehensive. Most of the responses came from freshman and senior students and people living off-campus. Eighty percent of the respondents who don't ride their bikes to campus said they would if the university built bike paths. Almost half said they consider campus and the surrounding areas unsafe for cyclists, and 66 percent have seen a bike accident on campus.
Taking action
Joseph Bilello, a professor of architecture, said it's time to seriously consider adding bike paths around campus.
"We're reaching critical mass," he said. "There's more advocacy for bicycling than in years past."
The more Ball State makes things visible to people, the more they know the university is doing something, he said.
"It's kind of like with lanes on the roads," he said. "If you add more lanes, more people will drive. The more tracks we put out there, the more we'll bike."
Adams used to ride her bike to campus, but after an accident sent her hurling toward a bus stop, she racked her bike for good. She's hoping for a bike lane.
"The questions now [are] what would it cost, where would it go and how would you phase it? Build it, and they will come."
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