I decided to research the USC Bike Ban as a potential post and couldn’t believe all of the fuss this issue has caused. Most of the comments weren’t even from USC students. Some facts needed to be set straight, so here are my comments below:
Comment on LADOT Bike Blog
I go to USC and am not a bicyclist. However, I have to agree that the bike ban seems a bit ridiculous. After reading through the comments, I had a few things I wanted to bring up. It is important to understand that only half of Trousdale is bike-free, and that is mainly because we have various career fairs, student involvement fairs and other events held on Trousdale during the day. DPS blocked off that section of Trousdale to ensure that there is no congestion or bike accidents considering the concentration of students in this area.
There needs to be some sort of bicycle education because there are some students who don’t exactly know how to ride bikes, or at least ride them responsibly. I remember seeing this girl accidently hit a pedestrian on her bike, but she didn’t even notice and rode off without even apologizing. She was so wrapped up in her text conversation that she didn’t even realize she had hit a person, which is ridiculous. I witness at least one bike accident a week, if not more. Not everyone at USC is like that girl, but these are the people that have given bicyclists a bad name on campus.
Bikerdude, I am glad that you are taking action and that you wrote a letter to President Nikias. However, I am not sure if an online education course is the best idea. For instance, freshmen are required to take an alcohol education course online, but most of them don’t read the slides and just keep clicking “next”. I believe in bike education, but feel that students won’t take the online course seriously and it won’t solve the problem in the long run. A bike safety talk during orientation or welcome week might be more beneficial. This session could be followed by students registering their bikes with DPS right outside to ensure that everyone’s bikes get registered, which has also been a growing problem. In any case, the bike ban is not the best solution.
Comment on BikingInLA
I totally agree with Brett Griffith in the sense that everyone is exaggerating all of the articles’ points and needs to see what the bike ban really means for USC. All of the articles concerning the USC bike ban can’t comprehend why USC can’t implement an adequate bike policy just like all of these other California schools. However, the various UC campuses that were mentioned are much larger than USC, which is actually a very small and condensed campus. There are various bike traffic jams at USC during peak hours on some of the smaller walkways, especially the walkway in front of Annenberg School for Communication. Because of this, it makes sense that the main throughways of the USC campus should be used for bikes or should be divided into bike and pedestrian lanes in order to separate the pedestrians and bikes. There is also a huge aesthetics problem in regards to the bike racks and the fact that the throughways are lined with an endless line of bikes. Most students don’t even park their bikes in the racks and instead just leave them in between other bikes or wherever is convenient for them, since they are late for class. Consequently, the accumulation of bikes in front of the buildings is ridiculous and probably 2-3 bikes wide, which makes it harder for everyone to walk the campus. There are tons of issues facing the bikes and I believe that an adequate solution will be made soon and the bike ban will be lifted.
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