On behalf of campus and local transportation and parking departments, I would like to welcome you to a truly leading university for both transportation and parking. Simply put, The Ohio State University is a great place to own and operate your car: we continue to make every effort to put your cars and SUVs first, as I'll discuss below.
First, I want to take this oppportunity to point out that OSU is the only school in the Big Ten not to have a designated bicycle lane on or near its campus. In fact, Columbus is also one of our nation's only large cities lacking a striped bike lane on any of its streets. We long ago realized that you prefer your cars, and several current and recently completed road projects ensure we should hold onto these distinctions for awhile.
Franklin County has nearly finished its successful conversion of Lane Ave. into a major traffic artery, with zero provision made for bicycles. New Hwy. 315 access ramps leading directly to the University Medical Center have opened, which we celebrated recently with a "Rally on the Ramp." We believe that allowing more convenient access for drivers to parking facilities will actually reduce the congestion in this expanding area of campus. Finally, in the heart of campus we are successfully widening Woody Hayes Dr. into a four-lane car boulevard, again with no street space allocated for annoying cyclists.
In fact, for many of the streets around campus, we have been careful to avoid any semblance of bicycle friendliness. When redesigning streets both on and off campus, we ensure that travel lanes are directly adjacent to the curb, making it unsafe for bicycles to consider sharing the road. Yes, bicycles are prohibited by law from traveling on sidewalks in most areas, and yes, traditional street planners know that on-street parking both makes traffic slower and sidewalks more pleasant. Traffic engineers don't like words like "slower."
It's clear to some of you, as it is to us, that the urban nature of our university inherently discourages bicycle use. Bicycle-friendly initiatives are better suited for hippie college towns like Ann Arbor, where hippie faculty ride their hippie bikes to teach a bunch of hippies about being better hippies. Columbus is too big for that. It is true that even larger cities are developing impressive bike infrastructure - Chicago already has 90 miles of striped bike lanes on existing roads - but well, Columbus isn't that big.
Anyway, now we hear rumors that other universities in cities have active programs and university-sponsored advocacy groups for encouraging alternative modes of transportation. Take the University of Minnesota, which has a similar urban setting and near-identical enrollment as OSU. Despite its colder climate, Minnesota has an extensive network of on-street bike lanes, covered bicycle lockers and a campus bus fleet fully equipped with bike racks. For those who don't bike, carpooling at Minnesota is actively encouraged with reduced-rate carpool parking lots, in addition to a far-superior mass transit system. Surf to www.umn.edu/pts for more of this absurdity.
In contrast, OSU's Transportation Policies & Procedures Guide devotes one of its 30 pages to "biking and walking," noting on page 27 that "cyclists should always ride with traffic." We're particularly proud that OSU boasts 30,000 parking spaces, compared to a measly 21,000 for U of M. How do they manage with one-third fewer spaces? Not our problem.
For those tree-huggers among you who actually prefer to ride your bikes to OSU for work or class, I want to assure you that the tens of thousands of courteous drivers on campus are fully understanding of your right to be on the road. You should not experience or expect beeping horns, derogatory comments or dangerous conditions. I'm confident that our courteous drivers have all read page 27 of our policy guide. And once you're in central campus, biking is actually quite pleasant.
I wish you all the best as you continue your endeavors here, arguably one of the least bicycle-friendly big state universities in the country. Until we hear from you that you want conditions to change, don't expect it to.
Dan Magestro is a postdoctoral researcher in the physics department. He can be reached for comment at magestro.1@osu.edu.
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