Transportation | News

Cycling Pulse Takes Campus Bicycle Programs Mobile

• By Tim Sohn
• 02/06/12

Cycling Pulse has unveiled Web-based and mobile portal Ride Campus for college and university faculty, staff, and students who commute by bicycle.

The cloud-based Ride Campus allows participants to automatically register their bicycles for free and connect with other cyclists through social media. Students provide registration information through an online form. Then, they will pick up a QR code tag at a designated on-campus location to place on their bicycle. The QR code will help bicyclists and security personnel locate a bike if it is stolen. Registration services are provided through Bike Shepherd.

Additional features of Ride Campus include:

• A variety of tools for campus safety departments, including sending bike policy infraction notifications to students;
• Access to bicycle data, which allows for the tracking of trends and targeting of high-crime locations;
• Support for surveying cyclists;
• Delivery of campus bicycle policies and other bicyclist-related announcements to students;
• Stolen bike alerts, which can be sent by students from mobile devices;
• Communicating with other bicyclists and cycling groups through Facebook and Twitter;
• Customization to each school's needs;
• An admin platform and editing suite; and
• Communication tools to connect schools using Ride Campus.

Bicyclists can keep track of their commutes in a variety of ways, by converting miles to money, gas, or carbon weight saved, for example. In addition, Ride Campus reveals the collective commute of all students who ride to campus.

Ride Campus also provides a variety of revenue-generating opportunities for the school, including:

• Fees for ride identification tags;
• Ads on university bicycle racks; and
• Push notification advertising.

Three packages are available to schools and universities: bronze, silver, and gold. For more information about each of the packages, visit the Ride Campus Web site.