The EGEN SWATeam held their second meeting for the Fall 2016 semester. Topics covered include:
All, we had 88 visitors last week—and that includes being closed on Monday and Thursday! We grossed $1,145.30; sold 19 memberships for $570; one bike for $120; and one build-a-bike for $40.
Last week was eventful. We had The Illinois Bike Summit, Light The Night, and on Friday I counted all the bikes in the warehouse: 517! Light the Night was very successful, installing 1188 lights (or 594 sets) at Alma Mater; numbers on the Illinois/Lincoln location are to-be-determined.
In tandem with Working Bikes, we’ve set the date for the Bike Warehouse to be emptied: October 7th. I will coordinate with Parking to insure we have access on that date.
I also set up a Facebook account to promote events and better connect with the cycling community.
This week I will work on building new bikes that I acquired from the warehouse, continue to organize for the Bike Warehouse event, and persist on the Sisyphean task of organizing inventory and streamlining volunteer tasks to make better use of everyone’s time.
Sincerely,
In September, Associate Director for Space Utilization Jill Maxey met with faculty and staff interested in the status of the Net Zero Growth Space Policy. She explained the calculations involved in setting up the Space Bank, and the anticipated usage going forward in future years.
Sarthak Prasad created a poster to be presented at the Professional Science Masters (PSM) Poster Session on October 5, 2016.
The main focus of this meeting was preparing the information for a poster. The poster will be presented at the Campus Sustainability Celebration in October of 2016. The team's objectives and any updates on projects will be included on the poster.
Attached are the PWR SWATeam meeting minutes and agenda for September 13th, 2016. At the monthly meeting, we discussed the Illini Gadget Garage and how this team may be able to help spread the word about this project once it is up and running. Ideas were also generated pertaining to information that will be displayed on posters for the upcoming Campus Sustainability Celebration on October 26, 2016.
Hello all, last week we had a gross sales total of 2,049.50. We sold 31 memberships for a total of $930. We sold 3 refurbished bikes for $360 and one build-a-bike for $80.
We’ve had a decent stream of volunteers at the campus bike center this past week, which has been welcome. Lily and I also attended the Illinois Bike Summit on Monday. It was an informative and empowering event to see so many like-minded people working for better biking in Illinois. We are continuing to prep and promote for Light The Night on Thursday.
This coming week we will host LTN, Lily is hosting Bicycling 101 and attending Urbana BPAC, which was eventful. I will continue inventory and the building of bikes as well continue to work on arranging for the bike warehouse exodus.
Sincerely,
This policy proposal was taken to the University Administration SAVPAC committee that decided not to implement it at this time. Associate director for campus sustainability, Ben McCall gave the SWATeam two reasons: 1) the UA representatives thought this should perhaps be handled at the campus level, and 2) they thought the paper purchased on campus was already primarily paper with recycled content.
Ben, Dave Grogan, and Cindy Klein-Benai at the UI Chicago Office of Sustainability are working to provide additional information to the committee, regarding the impact of the proposed policy.
Met with the university Facilities and Services officials and LED staff on Wednesday, September 21, 2016, to discuss the progress of LED Campus projects so far. The main focus of the meeting was Exit signs in the buildings. Meeting was hosted by Mogan Johnston, and attended by Ken Buenting, Brian Finet, Steven Bainbridge, and Patty Douglas.
Here is a status file sent to the SWATeams as input to their evaluation efforts, in preparation of the Campus Sustainability Celebration.
At the ECBS SWATeam initial meeting Marian Huhman was elected as a new chair. Recruting more proposals for education of other students about energy conservation was discussed. The "Illini Lights Out" Program pilot last semester was very successful and should be a year-long program. Engaging the whole campus for the "Green Labs" Program is needed. More funding for energy conservation was discussed. The completion of 2015 iCAP tasks poster templete is expected by September 23.
This was the first meeting of the Fall 2016 semester. Discussion was focused on non-potable water and meeting schedule for the rest of the semester.
iSEE reported to the SWATeam that they have reached out to NCSA to discuss incorporating a clean energy Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) in the next supercomputing grant application and agreement.
The EGEN SWATeam held their first meeting fo the Fall 2016 semester. Topics covered include:
Minnesota has been tracking bicycle commutes for the past few years using Radio-Frequency Identification tags (RFID tags). The progam has been successful at making it quick and easy for bicycle commuters to log their trips on to campus and enter them in to raffles or gain wellness points.
More information here:
http://www.derozap.com/gopherzap/
and,
https://www.derozap.com/zaptwincities/
Interesting program to watch as it has a positive impact on the Minneapolis/St. Paul mode-share.
First SWATeam of the ’16-17 School year. New Team Chair, Brent Lewis was chosen. During this meeting team discussed what they liked and wanted to continue from last semester. Also, summer updates were discussed during this meeting.
9/09/16
Summary: This meeting was our inaugural meeting for the year. On the agenda today was the creation of a team description, a review of ongoing projects, and planning for future meetings.
In attendance:
Josh Feldman
Claire Dondival
Ankit Singhai
Yangfeng Ouyang
Pete Varney
Lily Wilcox - Active Transportation Coordinator
Olivia Webb - Sustainability Programs Coordinator
Topics Covered:
Team Description
We collectively crafted our team description for the iCAP portal, which can be found at: https://icap.sustainability.illinois.edu/project/transportation-swateam.
Project Slides
Renewable Fleet Study:
Claire and Petehelped foster a discussion about the current types of alternative fuels for campus fleet vehicles. Currently, natural gas is the only type of fuel seriously looked at. One concern was that the gas CNG, while possible to implement, would be somewhat costly and have little payback unless driven many miles. Electric vehicles were brought up, but are currently not part of the market. Biodiesel was also mentioned, but its performance in cold weather is a concern.
Staff Mode Shift:
Lily discussed the ways that this project will reduce single occupancy vehicles. One idea looked at was bike sharing, which has been tried by Purdue but does not have much payback economically. Lily also discussed “It’s your MTD too”, which features social bus-riding trips which introduce MTD to campus employees.
Bike Plan:
This was a summary of effort to make campus more bike-friendly. This would include having more, and better, bike parking. UIUC was recently recognized as a bronze-level Bike Friendly University by the League of American Bicyclists.
Future Meetings
We decided that every other Friday at 1pm is a good time to hold meetings. We will be holding meetings in the National Soybean Research Laboratory. Our clerk Josh will send out reminders.
Hello all, first, the numbers: We had 78 visitors last week that signed our digital guestbook. We had $1,062.83 in gross sales; 15 memberships totaling $450; and a single build-a-bike for $120.
Things of note: The Bike Project voted at the last meeting to implement a two week trial policy of no-free-visits for the Campus Bike Center, which netted us a lot more memberships than we otherwise would’ve had. But it also served to quickly inform people that the CBC is a cooperative, investable space not a free university-provided service.
This past week I began reorganizing the shop, built up for-sale bikes, and organized a staff orientation meeting set for this evening.
This week I will build more bikes, continue to arrange and organize the space, finalize a student workers’ schedule for this semester, and begin to coordinate with Parking and Working Bikes on a shipment of bikes bound for Lesotho and Botswana.
Jake Benjamin
Campus Bike Center Manager
In support of the U.S. Department of Energy's SunShot initiative, NREL is offering no-cost technical assistance to universities seeking to go solar.
The charge letter was sent to FY17 SWATeam members, noting that the clerks will be reaching out to help schedule meetings for the fall.
