Bikers and pedestrians have long fought for concourse space at Auburn.
"I used to ride my bike to classes my freshman year," said Joseph Cortopassi, sophomore in biomedical sciences. "But honestly, weaving through the people during classes was just too difficult. I usually walk now."
As the amount of bikers on campus grows, the Office of Sustainability is working to facilitate biking, said Matt Williams, program manager for the Office of Sustainability.
Some of its actions to suit current bikers' needs and encourage more students to pick up biking include installing more bike racks--as many as 6,000 to 7,000 over the next two years--integrating more off-road bike paths and incorporating a campus bike shop in the Student Center.
Economic friendliness, health benefits, speed and ease make biking beneficial, Willaims said. Also, an increase in on-campus biking could help ease the lack of parking on campus.
"The best way to make biking safer is having more people on bikes," Williams said.
The idea of a rental area located in the proposed campus bike shop is also being discussed.
"Ideally, we would like to have a company run a program where students and faculty can swipe their Tiger Card, grab a bike, ride it for a few hours and return it or check out another bike," said Brad Cink, SGA executive vice president.
The Student Center bike shop should be open by January or February of next year.
"Bike culture in the '70s and '80s was huge at Auburn," Williams said. "The rise of bikers isn't so much a new movement as it is us getting back to our roots."
Even Katherine Cater and Jim Foy were spotted riding a tandem bike back in the '60s, when biking was all the rage on campus.
So cut loose the car keys and jump on a bike to speed past the concourse crowds on campus or around town quickly and conveniently.
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