It took a semester in Florence to convince Carrie Engerrand ’09 that she needed to start riding a bike again.

The art history student, who graduated in December, spent part of her junior year watching Italians tool around markets and zip down narrow alleyways with ease and enjoyment.

It was a pleasant, everyday reminder: Bikes are an efficient and low-hassle way to get places. And with the way Europeans rode with such carefree flair, it seemed trendy, not to mention healthy exercise and good for the environment.

“It also didn’t hurt that when I returned to campus, I saw that the parking situation wasn’t any better,” she said. “That clinched it for me.”

So for her senior year, Engerrand kept her car in the garage, borrowed her sister’s Raleigh and rode a few blocks to class. After thieves smashed the flimsy padlock that secured her bike outside of Moudy Hall during her sophomore year, she invested in a sturdier chain.
She also discovered that there’s protection in numbers too.

“I have never seen this many bikes before,” she said. “I think riding to class has become a lot more accepted, even cool. People who thought it was dorky before are now doing it and saying that they’re going green.”

This is exactly the kind of thinking sociology professor Keith Whitworth was hoping would develop here when he and his Applied Sociology class submitted a grant proposal for the TCU Purple Bike Program in 2006. They received $4,080 from the university’s Vision in Action campaign to purchase five custom bicycles with basket, lock and helmet. The rest of the funds helped keep the bikes maintained every month.

The program has grown to about 75 bikes and has a long wait list. Students check them out them on a weekly, monthly or semester-long basis — all for free. The point is to encourage students to drive less and reduce carbon emissions. The program has evolved to include an army of student volunteers that handles the maintenance, logistics and fundraising. Whitworth hopes to have a fleet of 250 bicycles in coming years.

But a campus stroll reveals that the bikes are not all Whitworth’s purple ones, and students are not just riding for environmental reasons either.

Senior DJ Perera, a studio arts major, lives off Merida Street and rides his Mongoose to campus because he doesn’t have a car. But it’s nothing new to him as bicycles are common transport in his native Sri Lanka, and he appreciates having a cheaper means of getting around. “It’s a relief not to have to worry about buying gas or repairs,” he said.

Sophomore math and engineering major Brian Preskitt lives in Clark Hall but chooses to ride his wheels, which he bought at a local thrift store, to save time and get where he wants to go faster. “It’s not about cool or uncool,” he said. “It’s just more convenient. The campus is getting more and more spread out.”

The bicycle industry has capitalized too, taking advantage of young people’s unquenchable desire to personalize and accessorize. “There are so many varieties now,” Whitworth said. “Retro bikes, cruisers, roadsters, mountain bikes. The TCU campus has them all.”

Five years ago, the Physical Plant saw the trend emerging and systematically began adding scores of steel ribbon-shaped racks wherever they saw a need for them. They almost look like art.

“We saw students parking their bikes and attaching them to trees, handrails, trash bins, you name it,” said Hollis Dyer, director of building maintenance. “Any place we saw that, we added a new rack. We also moved them to more visible locations near the entrances of buildings. So not only would they be useful, they would look aesthetically pleasing too.”

Gone are the thin, chipped brown-paint racks that were not cemented to the ground. In their place are a more-secure s-loop design that can handle about 10 bikes per rack. In late fall 2009, plant workers disassembled the last remaining old rack in front of Reed Hall, shortly before it closed for renovation.

That makes for about 180 racks now, by Dyer estimates. In 2004, the campus had only about 50 across its 268 acres. More are coming, he says, pointing to a campus map in his office with red dots marking each rack location.

“We rely on the building deputies to help us identify areas of need,” Dyer said. “We made a huge push in the Worth Hills part of campus in 2008. Students were used to driving from there to the east side. So that was an area of focus.”

How many bikes actually are on campus? No one knows for sure.

TCU Campus Police has offered free online bicycle registration for three years to combat theft and aid recovery, but so few students participate, it’s difficult even to get an estimate, said DeAnn Jones, who runs the program and is revising the department’s bike policy.

The department tracks make, color, serial number and description, and just this academic year, has begun issuing permit stickers with registrations, still at no cost.

Actually, cycling is a tricky topic for the campus police. While they acknowledge an upward trend in bike numbers, the department officially does not encourage riding on campus because of traffic and safety concerns, said TCU Police Chief Steve McGee.

“It’s difficult for both pedestrians and cyclists to share that space at peak times of the day. There is simply not enough room for both of them, and someone is going to get hurt,” McGee said. “We’re a pedestrian campus, and pedestrians have the right-of-way.”

The department also prohibits golf cart and mini truck use when classes let out, and drivers of those vehicles are to yield to pedestrians at all times, he said.

Bikes are listed as optional in packing lists the Office of Admission sends to new students, but McGee is not convinced freshmen need bikes as much as they think they will.

“We have seen an uptick in new students bringing bikes to school, mostly because parents want them to, but most are leaving them chained up,” he said. “They find that it’s just as easy and takes the same amount of time to walk.

“Now, if a bike is replacing a car, that’s different,” he said. “But with the bus and shuttle system, bikes are not a necessity, even to those students who live just off campus.”

But students continue to bring them, and it is a growing concern, McGee admitted. He has asked university officials to include a bike path for cyclists in the campus master plan, and while the issue has been studied, no immediate plans for one are in place.

The sticking point is location, said Will Stallworth, director of the physical plant, who coordinates master planning efforts.

“It’s not in the current version primarily because of limitations in available real estate,” Stallworth said. “The idea is to place parking on the perimeters and have people either walk or take the shuttle.”

It’s an interesting conundrum. TCU wants fewer vehicles on campus, and bikes help keep cars at the edges or away completely, but the campus can’t withstand an onslaught of cyclists.

Wider sidewalks may not solve the problem either, Stallworth said. Bike lanes striped on streets around campus, however, could keep cyclists and pedestrians from getting in the way, but how would it affect vehicle traffic?

Bikes are actually supposed to be pedaled in the street, not on the sidewalk, according to city ordinance, McGee said, but it is rare for a sidewalk cyclist to be ticketed.

A similar discussion is happening within Fort Worth. After a series of failed efforts, the City Council in February moved forward with a long-range plan to create 900 miles of new trails and bike lanes, up from 100 miles now. The paths would connect to popular destinations in Fort Worth and link adjoining cities. There is no current funding for the effort, but adding it to the city’s master plan makes future incremental support possible, in addition to state and federal grants. The city’s two largest bicycling clubs have lent their support.

Even as TCU works to become more pedestrian-friendly, it will take considerable time to break a mentality of convenience first, Whitworth said.

“We are not a bike culture in Texas, nor really a pedestrian culture. We are more in tune with big cars and parking close to where we want to go,” he said.

One thing TCU does need is rules for biking etiquette, Whitworth observed.

“It’s similar to when we all started using email. We didn’t know immediately not to type in all capital letters, but that eventually came about as a universal understanding,” he said. “As we develop a bike culture here, we’ll learn how to share the sidewalk. I tell riders to have a bell on their bikes to help them navigate and call ahead to a person walking in front of them that they are passing on the right or the left.”

Whitworth is hoping his Applied Sociology class’s project this spring will help police and university planners. The class has fitted global position system trackers on some of the purple bikes and will spend the semester studying riding patterns.

“Then we’ll use the data to see where bike paths should be laid out and make a proposal,” he said.

Comment about this story at tcumagazine@tcu.edu.