Stanford is one of 20 U.S. campuses to be designated earlier this month as a "Bicycle Friendly University" by the League of American Bicyclists. This is the first year of the recognition program.

"Universities have long served as incubators for developing bike-friendly cultures and practices, and that has a big impact on the expectations that students bring to the workplace and beyond," says Bill Nesper, director of the league's Bicycle Friendly America program.

Thirty-two higher-education institutions took part in the initial Bicycle Friendly University program. The league encourages accommodating bike riding on campuses because it can improve campus connectivity, reduce congestion and the school's carbon footprint; reduce health care and parking costs; enhance the quality of life on campus; and enable an institution to become a model for the rest of the nation.

As the only campus to receive a platinum designation, Stanford was singled out for the breadth of its biking program, including an extensive cycling network, biking incentive programs and education efforts such as last fall's Bike Safety Dorm Challenge.

That contest promoted bike safety among undergraduates on campus by encouraging students to pledge to follow the rules of the road and to wear a bike helmet for every ride, even short trips. The student housing unit with the highest percentage of participants won a bus charter to Lake Tahoe.

Forty student residences took part in the challenge, and two were named winners--ZAP (54 residents) and Phi Sig (26 residents) each had 100 percent participation.

Other bicycle-safety efforts at Stanford include free monthly safety classes, free bike safety dorm road shows, discounted helmets, a free safety repair station and a citation-diversion class, which enables students who are cited for safety violations to attend a bike safety class in lieu of paying the bike citation fine.

"The many departments that contribute to Stanford's overall bicycle program intend to make even greater progress in the years ahead to create a safer and more sustainable environment for our community though improvements for bicyclists and all road users," says Brodie Hamilton, director of parking and transportation services at Stanford.

The League of American Bicyclists notes that 21.7 percent of the people at Stanford commute to campus by bike. The campus has 12,000 bike rack spaces, the university says.

It also offers storage lockers and cages for bikes, and showers and clothes lockers for riders.

The complete list of "bike-friendly" citations:

• Platinum: Stanford.
• Gold: University of California Davis; University of California Santa Barbara.
• Silver: California State University Long Beach; Colorado State University, Fort Collins; Portland (Ore.) State University; University of Arizona, Tucson; University of California Irvine; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; University of Oregon, Eugene; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Bronze: Boise (Idaho) State University; Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.; Emory University, Atlanta; Indiana University, Bloomington; Michigan State University, East Lansing; University of California Los Angeles; University of Maryland, College Park; University of North Carolina Greensboro.

• 30 feet: The height of a thermal energy storage tank being built at Utah State University in Logan. When the 2 million-gallon tank, which will be buried beneath a recreation field on campus, becomes operational, it is expected to save about $100,000 a year in energy costs.

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