On June 17, the Commonwealth Transportation Board (CTB) distributed $21.9 million in grants throughout the state as part of its Transportation Enhancement Program. Of the total, a small part—$35,000—went to a novel bicycle program called Ubikes, currently being studied at the University of Virginia by the Office of the Architect and UVA Parking and Transportation.
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“Bike sharing is being explored as part of the University’s overall approach to sustainability,” says Rebecca White, director of Parking and Transportation, in an e-mail.
Ubikes began as a student project in 2009 in the McIntire School of Commerce. That year, it was named one of three top projects and awarded $750 as part of UVA’s Sustainability Project Competition.
“We began meeting with University administration to build institutional support,” says Peter Elbaor, a recent UVA grad who worked on the project. “They liked the project in abstract, but the question came down to dollars and cents and how it is going to be funded, how is it going to be implemented, and things like that.”
Elbaor says that while the University temporarily shelved the program, students shopped around for grant opportunities and finally settled on the Transportation Enhancement Program as a good source of funds.
“We developed a multi-disciplinary research program with students in the Architecture School to conduct a feasibility study,” he says. “We pushed UVA to apply for the [grant], we wrote the grant and passed it along to the Architect’s office and Parking and Transportation, which ultimately submitted the grant.”
According to the CTB’s Transportation Enhancement allocations, Ubikes is estimated to cost $590,143. The $35,000 grant will help advance the idea of a bike-sharing program and, according to White, “will assist UVA in defining how bike-sharing on Grounds could integrate into the overall transportation network of the University.”
In essence, Ubikes is a two-wheel take on the Zipcar program—a car-sharing system offered at UVA. Other colleges and universities have already adopted programs similar to Ubikes, such as the University of Oregon’s Bike Loan Program, a long-term bike loan program coupled with educational classes. “As a resource for alternative transportation,” reads the website for UO’s program, “we will minimize our campus and community environmental impact.”
Ubikes has comparable goals. Elbaor says the goal for UVA’s program is to “promote a totally new way of thinking about transportation.”
“The other real advantage to this is that it can stimulate a cultural shift in urban commuter behavior,” says Elbaor. “Bike sharing is not new.”
Heather Higgins, spokesperson for Bike Charlottesville, a coalition of local bike advocates, says that while the program is “exciting,” it should devote attention to elements beyond bike sharing, such as public education and maintenance. But if the program is designed to increase ridership, “that’s what we are all about,” she says.
In the meantime, the grant, which will also generate $8,833 in matching funds from UVA Parking and Transportation, will help the Ubikes program study “the system’s design, station locations, bicycle and pedestrian safety, coordination with transit service, coordination with streetscape improvements, and historic area context,” says White.
The Office of the Architect will receive the Transportation Enhancement grant in November. Between now and then, White says work will be done to assess “the scope of services for the study.”
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