Ride on
Danielle Holmes is content with her newfound decision to travel to, from and around campus by the means of a bicycle.
As a senior, this is her first year using a bicycle as her transportation of choice – a method that appears to be booming in the Syracuse University community.
‘It seems like a lot more students are riding bikes this year,’ said Holmes, a senior information management technologies major. ‘Maybe I never noticed it before because I didn’t ride.’
Even more feasible is that students may have become increasingly aware of the physical, economic and environmental perks that come from something as simple as riding a bike.
‘It’s faster, and I never have a problem with it,’ Holmes said.
In the March 31, 2008 Student Association assembly meeting, Alejandro Fernandez, SA Director of the Committee on Off-Campus Affairs, stressed ‘making the campus and nearby community more bike friendly.’
Whether this proposal includes refinement of bike trails, installation of more bike racks or winter storage for bikes is unspecified. Regardless of its stipulations and of looming improvement, it is doubtful that a lack of trails or official bike rack space will deter the growing amount of bike savvy students.
Dessa Bergen-Cico, a health and wellness professor at SU, said a new phenomenon known as ‘exercise snacking’ among the health and wellness community may have opened the bike-riding floodgates.
‘Any sustained aerobic activity that gets the heart rate from 50 to 80 percent provides exercise benefits: reduced cholesterol and blood pressure, burning of calories, cardiovascular disease prevention,’ she said.
New studies have shown that the recommended 30 minutes of aerobic activity per day doesn’t have to be consecutive anymore in order to receive these benefits. This places riding a bike to classes and around campus among the most beneficial and least time consuming ways for students to exercise, Bergen-Cico said.
She also suggested the public awareness of these benefits may have fostered the rebirth of this transportation movement.
Despite the well-known physical benefits of daily aerobic exercise, a number of students find the health and wellness benefits gained from riding a bike to class merely perks. For many bike riders, the real draw of using wheels in lieu of legs is convenience and speed.
As Amelia Ramsey-Lefevre, a sophomore at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, struggled to hoist her bicycle onto the wall-mounted racks outside of Illick Hall, she defended her somewhat burdensome choice of transportation.
‘I don’t have a car, so it saves a lot of time,’ she said.
Marcin Zak, a freshman psychology major at SU who commutes from home about a mile away from campus, shared a similar view.
‘Health is a secondary thing, really,’ he said. ‘It saves a lot of time; that’s the big one.’
Apparently neither rain nor snow can dampen the soul of a bike rider. In Monday’s on-and-off precipitation, the traffic flow of bike riders did not drop off. Rather, the emergence of plastic bags, hats and hooded sweatshirts increased. Dan Chang, a sophomore architecture major, opted for a light jacket for protection from the rain.
‘I ride my bike for efficiency,’ Chang said. ‘I figured it would be faster to ride my bike than to take the bus all the way from South Campus.’
Economic repercussions may also play a hand in this growing trend. A Facebook group called ‘I ride my bike to class’ says in its description, ‘Paying for gas is for suckers. Ride your bike everywhere you go.’
With gas prices emptying wallets more rapidly than ever before, the group might just be right.
Chris Cresswell, a junior music studies major, opts to traverse the campus via bicycle. While he praises the convenience of riding a bike to class, he notes that the SU campus could be more bike-friendly.
‘It’s not bad. It could be a lot worse,’ he said. ‘But the bike racks are always full and there isn’t really anywhere to keep your bike during the winter.’
Chang, as well as a number of other students, remain undeterred by the harsh winter weather to come.
‘I’ll still ride my bike in the winter whenever possible,’ Chang said. ‘It’s just too convenient.’
Published on September 16, 2008 at 12:00 pm
