HKS Trace Paper

I participate in a lot of discussions that deal with the subject of the LEED® green building rating system.  In about 80% of those presentations, the subject of bike racks come up.

“Why do bike racks get so much credit?”  “This is totally a ‘bought’ credit and has nothing to do with the environment” and, ”This just shows how ridiculous LEED® is.”  Comments like this go on and on.

Well, I’ve personally never had a problem with the bike rack credit, so I decided to do a little more digging through my own mind to see why I don’t have an issue with it, when it seems like everyone around me does.  I came up with a few points.

1. Bike racks support the mission of the USGBC.  The mission of the USGBC is “To transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy, and prosperous environment that improves the quality of life.“  An increased number of bike racks is an invitation to people in the community to bike to work.  It is about a cultural change.  Biking to work is a socially responsible and healthy activity.  It reduces the number of cars on the street, allowing more interaction between people instead of bumpers.  Also, it is probably safe to say that those who bike to work are more healthy than those who don’t do a similar sort of exercise.  I don’t think anyone frowns on those who bike to work.  But those people probably wouldn’t bike to work if there was not a safe place to keep their bikes.
2. Bike racks give employees the freedom to be more economically responsible.  Have you ever done a calculation on how much money you would save if you rode a bike to work?  If you rode 10 miles to work (20 miles round trip) that is about a gallon of gas each day.  If you are paying $3.50/gallon and you work 5 days per week, 50 weeks out of the year, then you could potentially save $875.00.  And for people who have to pay for parking, the savings could be much more than that.  This isn’t even taking into account the money you’ll save from being more healthy.  I think those simple bike racks will be full more often as gas prices get in the $5.00 range.
3. Bike racks can potentially reduce a lot of carbon emissions.  If I rode my bike 5 miles to work each day, I could reduce my carbon emissions by 9.7 lbs per day.  If I worked 50 weeks out of the year, then I would reduce my carbon emissions by about 2,425 lbs.  I wouldn’t bike to work if there wasn’t a secure place to put my bike.  If we take that to the extreme and look at China, there is an estimated 0.8 billion bikes in China.  If we assume that only 25% of those bikes are used to bike to work (which is a very conservative estimate) and each of those bikes saved the same amount of carbon emissions as my bike could, then we’re talking about 485,000,000,000 lbs of carbon reduction each year.  Let’s make sure to thank China for riding their bikes.

In the end, supplying a bike rack is about inspiring a cultural change.  It does not do anything for your building’s energy use.  It does cost money to put the bike rack in.  But if you look at the overall goal of what the green building movement is about, a simple bike rack could be a big deal. 

Bike to work week this year is May 16th through May 20th.  Let’s fill up those bike racks, and if there aren’t any bike racks, let’s bring so  many bikes in the office that our employers choose to provide a good rack.