Keep your eyes peeled for the many bike paths on or near the Twin Cities campus.
The road to biking bliss
By Rick Moore
For students, staff, and faculty living within a few miles of the Twin Cities campus, commuting by bicycle offers a slew of advantages. Your transportation budget is immune to rising gas prices, there are no freeway entrance ramps to bog you down, and the parking is utterly fabulous.
The biking season kicked into gear for some commuters with the dawn of the Metro Transit strike. Even with the buses back on the road, it's peak season for biking around campus--that rare time of the year when even the bountiful bike racks at the U are short on exposed silver.
Of course, that also means it's high season for biking rogues--those folks who go the wrong way down the bike lane on University Avenue or who weave in an out of pedestrians on Northrop Mall at 15 mph. To keep you from heading down the path of cycling scofflaws, here are some rules and strategies as provided by Parking and Transportation Services at the University.
- Always yield to pedestrians.
- Ride on the right with traffic.
- Obey all traffic signs and signals.
- Never ride on campus sidewalks (unless it is designated as a bike lane with pavement markings).
- Lock your bike with a cable and lock as well as a U-lock to deter theft.
- Never lock your bike to a handrail (unless you want it to be impounded).
- Never attach your bike to trees, fences, bus shelters, or patio furniture.
- Don't leave your bike unattended for an extended period of time. Bikes will be tagged and removed if they have been abandoned.
- Take advantage of the designated bike paths and lanes whenever possible, and be sure to follow the directional arrows on the ground.
For more campus biking information, see http://www.parkandtrans.umn.edu/biking.htm.