Traci Liebig rides her bike to work every day.
She makes the 20-minute trip on the rail trail path along the river, riding past dewy flowers before she pulls up to Stewart Hall and begins her day as the executive assistant to West Virginia University Provost Michele Wheatly.
Liebig isn’t the only one among WVU’s employees who powers her own way to the office.
“I’ve been biking to work for three or four years now and every year I can tell the number of other people riding is on the rise, which is nice to see in Morgantown,” she said.
Liebig cycles to work mostly because she enjoys it. She gets those minutes every morning and afternoon to transition between home and work, fully wake up in the morning and avoid traffic snarls in the evening.
“It saves me money,” she said. “And I don’t have to sit in traffic and burn gas.”
May 16-20 is Bike to Work Week, which is part of National Bike Month and culminates in Bike to Work Day on Friday, (May 20). WVU’s Office of Sustainability is using the week to remind employees and students of the services available to cyclists on campus and in Morgantown.
Cyclists and others who may still need to park on campus can take part in the Occasional Parker Program. WVU’s Office of Transportation and Parking provides 18 one-day permits each year for those who need to park on campus every now and then.
WVU’s Mountaineer Station, an intermodal facility on Van Voorhis Road, offers indoor lockers, bike racks and showers for cyclists who can then ride the Personal Rapid Transit system to their destination.
WVU’s director of Transportation and Parking, Hugh Kierig, said that for those who are uncomfortable with cycling on city streets, the City of Morgantown offers the Confident City Cycling program. WVU will pay the cost for employees to attend the program, which focuses on traffic rules and skills.
Kierig encourages the WVU community to consider cycling as a way to get to work.
“There’s health benefits, obviously, and there’s reductions in congestion on the streets, there is increased air quality—there’s a whole variety of benefits not only to the bicyclists but also to the community.”
As part of the week-long recognition, WVU’s sustainability program is collecting rider profiles for student, staff and faculty commuters. To upload images, videos and stories of yourself biking on campus, click here or go online to http://simpleforms.scripts.wvu.edu/sf/RiderProfile/
For a complete list of community biking information, including campus bicycle rack locations, bicycle rentals and traffic rules, visit the WE CAN website and click on the “Bicycling on Campus and Beyond” button.
To find out more about WVU’s sustainability efforts, go to http://wecan.wvu.edu/
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dm/05/16/11
CONTACT: Clement Solomon, Office of Sustainability
304-293-7916, clement.solomon@mail.wvu.edu
Follow @WVUToday on Twitter.