To save parking spots and go green, the 1,000-student [Ripon] college offered incoming freshmen a brand-new Trek 820 mountain bike, a Trek Vapor helmet and a Master Lock U-Lock - all to keep - if they pledged to leave their cars at home.
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The Ripon bike giveaway, called the Velorution Project, has been wildly popular. Some 60% of freshmen [...] signed up for bikes, which they picked up Tuesday.

It’s one of the more innovative programs among a flurry of campus transportation initiatives at colleges and universities in Wisconsin. The programs are aimed at reducing the carbon footprint and parking demand by encouraging students, faculty or staff to use their cars less in favor of bikes, public transit, ridesharing or car-sharing programs.

Ripon appears to have learned from the mistakes of its predecessors. Before going bankrupt last spring, nearby Wallington University offered each incoming freshman the choice of a year’s worth of bus passes, a foldable scooter with matching carrying case, or an i2 Segway Personal Transporter.  “Surprisingly, we found that most kids chose the Segway, which stretched the program’s budget a bit,” recalled ex-Dean Laurence Robson.  “And many of them would then stow their Segways in the back of their SUVs every night when they drove home.  I really wish we had made them sign some sort of no-car pledge.”

“But the main problem was all the incidents involving kids being found unconscious next to overturned Segways, with scooter-wheel-shaped bruises all over their bodies,” Robson concluded.  “The Board of Directors didn’t like that at all.”

Tags: science, technology, transportation, bicycles, scooter-wheel-shaped bruises, carbon footprint, the board of directors didn't like that at all, scooters, segways, universities

Blame Rob Anderson. At a time when most other cities are encouraging biking as green transport, the 65-year-old local gadfly has stymied cycling-support efforts here by arguing that urban bicycle boosting could actually be bad for the environment. That’s put the brakes on everything from new bike lanes to bike racks while the city works on an environmental-impact report.
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Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It’s an “attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy,” he wrote in his blog this month.

..."Regardless of the obvious dangers, some people will ride bikes in San Francisco for the same reason Islamic fanatics will engage in suicide bombings—because they are politically motivated to do so,” he wrote in a May 21 post.

“It’s ridiculous to believe,” Mr. Anderson told this reporter, “that encouraging commuters to travel under their own power would do anything to reduce emissions.  Once you have people freeing themselves from the yoke of passenger-vehicle ownership, it’s not long before they begin to have stronger muscles and more efficient circulatory systems.  And that leads irrevocably to fitter, healthier people with higher self esteem.  And those are exactly the types of people who buy fancy organic foods… organic foods that have to be shipped into the city, which uses up more fuel than if they ate only local products like fish and apples.”

“It’s clear why people take to biking,” continued the two-time failed candidate for the city’s Board of Supervisors. “They want to develop shapelier legs so that they can make the rest of us look like trolls in comparison to their god-like bodies. These brainwashed few are creating a culture that values leading an active lifestyle instead of focusing on what is really important in this world: consuming countless civic resources by objecting to all of City Council’s ideas, and minimizing the time it takes for me to drive to the donut shop at the end of the block.”

Anderson then turned and wheezed his way down the courthouse steps, pausing halfway down to tear a box of Thin Mints from a Girl Scout’s arms.  Tears welled up in the pigtailed second-grader’s eyes as Anderson waved his cane in her face, asking, “Do you know why you are selling these chocolate discs of death?” When the girl responded by whispering something about a “camping trip,” Anderson began to pummel the carton with his cane, shouting, “No!  It is because you are politically motivated to do so. This is a blatant attempt by the Girl Scouts of America to screw up our gastrointestinal tracts on behalf of the cookie fantasy.”

The rest of his rant was drowned out when the balance of the troop arrived and swiftly engulfed Anderson in a shrill brown whirlwind.  “They just got badges in knot-tying,” said a troop mother as she looked on. “I would try to stop them, but I think girls get more out of life experiences if you don’t interfere in their battles.  Also, last summer Mr. Anderson petitioned the City Council to force me to take out my gladiola bed because he said they were an ‘eyesore’ and as a British flower they had no place in an American yard.”

Turning to the girls, she called out over the melee, “Madison, that round turn and two half-hitches isn’t any good if it’s not nice and tight.”

Tags: bicycles, gadfly, pollution, chocolate discs of death, the bicycle fantasy, san francisco