KU named bike-friendly campus; new text alert system warns drivers of lot closures

photo by: Nick Krug

A student bikes across the intersection at Engel Road and 15th Street en route to Daisy Hill, Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2015, on the campus of Kansas University. In the newly-released U.S. News and World Report's Best Colleges list, KU is ranked 115th among national universities.

The University of Kansas is now an official Bicycle Friendly University (bronze level), an honor bestowed by the League of American Bicyclists.

That doesn’t mean friendly on your quads, as riders who pedal up the hill can no doubt attest.

It means KU is “raising the standard and being innovative in making bicycling a safe, convenient and enjoyable option for students, staff and visitors alike,” according to a news release from KU.

A major contributor to the designation is KU’s new Campus Bike Plan, available online at bike.ku.edu (pending final revisions expected next week), according to the university. The KU Bicycle Advisory Board, urban planning graduate students and the KU Center for Sustainability worked together to create the plan. It has a study of current biking conditions plus recommendations including new standards for bike parking, “end-of-trip facilities” (such as showers and locker rooms) in new and renovated buildings, signage and road markings for bike routes and hiring a campus bicycle coordinator.

“The KU Bicycle Advisory Committee and our campus partners have worked hard over the past few years to encourage students and employees to ride to campus, raise awareness about bicycle safety and promote new standards for bike infrastructure on campus,” Center for Sustainability director Jeff Severin said. “Their efforts are helping build a stronger bike culture.”

• Move it — KU Parking’s new text alert system notifies of lot closures: A basketball game here, a football game there, construction projects popping up, a country music star randomly performing in the lot where you usually park. If you don’t get the memo, you may find yourself hitching a ride to the tow yard, or at least paying a parking ticket.

In fairness, KU Parking and Transit has been notifying permit-holders of upcoming lot restrictions via its official KU email addresses and on Twitter, but director Donna Hultine said those often get glossed over. “It’s just really hard to get them to pay attention to, you know, another email from KU,” she said.

Enter KU Parking’s text alert system. The service, new this semester, sends text alerts to whichever parking permit holders will be affected by an upcoming closure. For example, those with permits to park in the yellow-zone lot east of the stadium got reminders telling them to make way for Brad Paisley, who performed in the lot Oct. 14.

More than 300 people had signed up to receive texts at that time, and it seemed to help, Hultine said. “There may have been two cars in the lot, and that was fantastic.”

Anyone with a KU Parking account can sign up to receive the text alerts through the parking page in the myKU portal, Hultine said.

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• I’m the Journal-World’s KU and higher ed reporter. See all the newspaper’s KU coverage here. Reach me by email at sshepherd@ljworld.com, by phone at 832-7187, on Twitter @saramarieshep or via Facebook at Facebook.com/SaraShepherdNews.