Improving on-Campus Bicycle Parking Facilities Through Community-assisted Traffic Navigation

With the growing levels of green house gases in the atmosphere, many people have shown increased interests to embrace the environmental-friendly mode of transportation, biking [5]. Incidentally, biking offers numerous other benefits, such as a means of daily exercise while commuting to work, which is both economical and saves time. Montana State University (MSU) strives to be one of the leaders to motivate its students, faculty, and staff to prefer biking as their primary mode of transportation. However, in order for MSU to achieve a biker-friendly campus, receptacles to park bikes must be available at all times. As of the current date, such receptacles are either not placed appropriately across various campus locations or are not available in abundance at all times. This situation is evident by the increasing numbers of bikes being tied to vertical posts or even trees at several MSU campus locations. Other university campuses, such as University of Montana, take several approaches to ensure that the receptacles are available at all times during peak school hours – resulting in University of Montana receiving the Silver Bicycle Friendly Award by League of American Bicyclists [11]. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no mechanism available to MSU that enables efficient utilization and placement of bike receptacles to strongly promote a biker-friendly campus. As a result, MSU students, faculty, and staff often feel discouraged to use their bikes for commuting purposes.