Part of an on-going series of blog entries by the students in START, the UCLA Transportation-sponsored bike-related Action Research Team in the Education for Sustainable Living Program.
By Anand M.
In our efforts to improve knowledge about sustainable transportation in and around the UCLA campus, last week START (Sustainable Transportation Action Research Team) analyzed the bike rack situation on campus by conducting bicycle rack level of service counts.
[Note from Sirinya: Level of service (LOS) is a measure of how well transportation infrastructure is working. LOS is most commonly used to analyze highways, but the concept has also been applied to intersections, transit, and bicycles.]

ALWAYS AT CAPACITY: Cyclists have to look gingerly to find an open spot to lock up a bike at the racks by the Engineering building.
Over the course of three days, our team split the entire UCLA campus into six areas from McGowen Hall to the Wilshire Center and located where all the bike racks on campus were and how (and in certain cases, by whom) they were being used.
We also recorded the type of racks, the number of spots that were available in each location, and the number of bikes occupying the racks. Bikes that were abandoned and those attached to improper locations such as railings and posts were also noted. The counts were done between the strategic hours of 10:00 AM and Noon, the busiest part of the day so we could get the best measure of how in use the bike racks on campus are. (more…)