There’s a great article in Yahoo! News that discusses the current bike hype for students on college campuses.

Today many colleges are offering amazing incentives for students to ride their bike to and from class, all in an effort to avoid fuel consumption, campus overcrowding and a large carbon footprint.

Schools with a Mission

Here are a few schools that are going green with bikes:

• Emory University ‘ Its $250,000 ‘Bike Emory‘ initiative includes selling discounted bikes to students and faculty and building bike lanes throughout campus. Even the President’s Cabinet supports the program:

• Ripon College ‘ We mentioned this school a few months ago in a blog post. The college actually gives bikes worth $300 to freshmen who vow to leave their cars at home.
• Duke University ‘ The school spends $24,000 on a bike-share program.
• Northern Illinois University/ Illinois State University ‘ Both offer a free bike-sharing program that gives riders a lock and helmet.
• University of Washington ‘ Received a $200,000 grant and bought 40 electric bikes for a bike-share program next year

These are just a few of the colleges that were mentioned in the article. You can read the entire article here.

Could you imagine how many tons of pounds of CO2 these colleges are preventing just by offering students bikes? I’m sure it’s a lot considering how many students drive to class.

We hope this initiative becomes popular enough to spark a national bike-sharing program, not only for colleges, but maybe for other types of institutions and organizations.