Our View

Published On: 03/24/2008

As you probably know, the environmentally friendly concept of “going green” is in full swing in America. Everywhere you turn there is a new hybrid of some sort.

A big part of becoming environmentally conscious is choosing your transportation. On a downtown campus such as UAB, this decision tends to be a bicycle.

It’s not a hybrid, but it’s faster than driving in most situations. Everyday you notice people riding their bicycles. And with spring fast upon us, in combination with escalating gas prices, a decent speculation is that we will be seeing more of these bicycles.

Here’s the problem. Where do we park our bikes? We have a brand-new multi-million dollar Heritage Hall with no bike rack. We have the HUC with just a few inverted “U’s” bolted into the concrete which hold two bikes max.
The same goes for the BEC, Volker Hall, Ryals, the Chemistry building, Sterne Library and Campbell Hall, just to name a few.

You may notice the lack of bike racks is not stopping riders from chaining their bikes to benches, street signs, trash cans and whatever else they can wrap their chains around.

A few buildings on campus do a great job of accommodating bicyclists though. The residential buildings, for example, have outstanding bike racks. The bike rack at Blount Hall can hold up to 40 bikes.

No problems here. But having a bike rack of that size for each building would just be silly. Perhaps having them in just a few key hot spots on campus would make more sense.

We understand there are some buildings that don’t see much traffic. In fact, there are just a few buildings that do see this enormous level of traffic we’re talking about, primarily located on 14th Street S to 16 Street S down University Blvd.

To students that don’t use bicycles to navigate campus, this is not an issue. However, we have students that do see this as an issue. It’s a parking issue. Let’s leave no bike behind.

-the editors