Get ready to dismount from your bicycles, skateboards, golf carts and scooters. This fall, ASU will introduce its first walk-only zone, where all forms of wheeled transportation will be forbidden during heavy traffic periods.
The first zone, which stretches along Cady Mall from the south end of the Memorial Union to the north end of Hayden Lawn and expands to the east and west to encompass the heavily trafficked areas outside the MU, will launch at the start of the fall 2013 semester.
Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, no students, staff or vendors will be able to drive or ride on the sidewalks in these areas. Two more walk-only zones are planned.
As he rode his bike past construction in front of the MU, mechanical engineering senior Aaron Carrillo said he didn't see the need for a complete ban on bikes in the area.
Carrillo said he's been riding his bike there for years, and that while he's seen a few accidents, he's never been involved in one.
"There's times when it gets busy, but it gets busy everywhere (on campus)," he said.
Instead of forcing students to get off their bikes in the designated areas, he said the University should establish bike lanes.
"There should just be bike paths," Carrillo said. "Have bikes on one side and people on the other and make it clear, and then there won't be accidents."
Business communications sophomore Brian Keeble, meanwhile, said the wheel-free area is too large.
Keeble rides his skateboard through the area several times a day, between his classes at the W. P. Carey School of Business just south of the MU and his work on the other side of campus. He said he doesn't see too much traffic.
"I could see having (a wheel-free zone) right in front of the MU," he said. "It gets crazy there, but the rest of this place is fine."
The push is the latest in the past several years to cut down on campus congestion between classes on the Tempe campus.
In fall 2011, the Tempe Undergraduate Student Government launched a campaign, "Walk Your Wheels," that encouraged students to dismount and walk their bikes and skateboards in areas with heavy foot traffic.
The campaign was the result of many complaints received by USG and the ASU administration from people who were involved in collisions between bikes and pedestrians.
USG chose to use safety education as a method of curbing traffic rather than banning all bikes, then-president Jacob Goulding told The State Press in August 2011.
"We didn’t want to ban any bikes or ban any skateboards from campus. We didn’t think that was fair,” he said. “But we did move toward the idea of creating and building a culture where students, when they’re in a crowd, will simply understand that it’s probably the best time to either get off their skateboard and walk it or get off (their) bike and walk (their) bike.”
USG put up signs around campus encouraging people to walk their wheels, but there was no police enforcement.
Other areas of campus have taken further steps to eradicate the bikes on campus. Administrators at the Barrett, the Honors College Academic Complex considered completely banning bikes inside the complex this past spring, when students weren't following the Walk Your Wheels guideline.
Along with the ban on wheeled transportation in areas of campus on weekdays, the University will add more locked storage areas for bicycles and skateboards, allowing students to safely leave their wheels.
Biology senior Luke Jarvie, who rides his bike from his home west of campus to classes and work every day, said losing bike access to that convenient stretch of Cady Mall would make his commute harder.
"I guess I'm going to have to start riding around it," he said. "I'll just be zigging and zagging all around campus to get to class."
Reach the managing editor at julia.shumway@asu.edu or follow @JMShumway on Twitter.
Like The State Press on Facebook and follow @statepress on Twitter.
