Bicycle Friendly America Summer 2017 - 8

2017 NATIONAL BIKE SUMMIT

NBS17 MOBILE WORKSHOP
HIGHLIGHTS GOLD BICYCLE
FRIENDLY UNIVERSITY UMD
AMELIA NEPTUNE

L

MICHAEL GORMAN

ast year, at the 2016 National Bike
Summit, we hosted the first-ever Bicycle Friendly America mobile workshops, which were a huge hit. We heard
from NBS16 participants that getting out
on bikes and being able to tour bicyclefriendly facilities at our business and
community partners were highlights of
their week in DC. This year, we brought
back the mobile workshops to the 2017
National Bike Summit, and added a new
tour of a Gold-level Bicycle Friendly
University, the University of Maryland
(UMD) at College Park.
The tour at UMD kicked off with a
welcome from College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn, who described the many

8 BICYCLE FRIENDLY AMERICA

"The group of nearly twenty campus bicycle coordinators from around the
country had a fruitful discussion about their own challenges and successes on
campus."
ways that the city and university are
working to improve bicycle-friendliness
for residents, students, and visitors. We
then spent the morning touring the campus on UMD's new Zagster bikeshare
bikes, including a stop at the campus-run
bike shop. The tour was organized and
led by UMD's full-time Bicycle Coordinator, Aaron Goldbeck, who says "I was
very proud to show off what UMD has
accomplished during the mobile work-

shop and thought that our conversations
were incredibly illuminating."
Aaron added, "It is rare for folks working on bike issues in higher ed to meet
face-to-face. I'm grateful that the NBS
gives us the opportunity-we are in a
specialized niche, but each of us has the
ability to impact thousands of students.
If we impart a good understanding of cycling to the students at our institutions,
that is possibly a huge number of new
members of the bicycling community.
Sharing ideas with one another at the
NBS is a great opportunity to improve
our campuses and increases the chances
of UMD positively impacting thousands
of students a year."
After the tour, we stopped for lunch
and a presentation by Aaron, highlighting a number of efforts on the campus
including data collection, adaptive bikes
in their bikeshare fleet, enforcement and
education programs, and plans for future infrastructure improvements. Over
lunch, the group of nearly twenty campus bicycle coordinators from around the
country had a fruitful discussion about
their own challenges and successes on
campus.
The UMD mobile workshop was part
of a larger effort to add more Bicycle
Friendly University-related content to the

http://www.bikeleague.org/university http://www.bikeleague.org/university http://www.transportation.umd.edu/bike.html http://www.transportation.umd.edu/bike.html http://www.transportation.umd.edu/bike.html http://www.transportation.umd.edu/bike.html

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Bicycle Friendly America Summer 2017