Challenging car culture

"With Free Bikes, Challenging Car Culture on Campus"

By: Katie Zezima
Date: October 19, 2008

Summary: This article provides information about riding a bike on college campuses (rather than driving a car).


This article was really fun to read. It discusses how a colleges are really trying to push bike riding to be the primary transportation on campus. "When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle." Universities in England and Wisconsin are giving free bikes to any freshmen who agrees to leave their car at home. How cool! Other colleges are setting up rental programs for their campuses or working with bike stores to help keep prices low. The goal is to eliminate parking shortages and help unclog the city roads around the school. I feel like this is an awsome idea because it will help eliminate collede kids from doing other things in addition to what was mentioned like limit drinking and driving and giving off co2 emision. It will also help teenagers from gaining the typical "freshman 15". Young adults will also get to keep the inner child in them who can pop wheelies and coast down big hills! This could impact many familes by saving them lots of gas money along with insurance and car payments. On the negitive side, other schools are shutting this program down because to many bikes are being stolen or vandelized. =[ This source is fairly reliable. A woman from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, comments on the explosion of bikes in this topic. Their are also a few quortes from college students and there opinions and Michael Daley, head of the university’s environmental council and a professor of economics (in England). Lots of the stats in this article are opinions though.