SUNY New Paltz Recognized By League of American Bicyclists

This October, SUNY New Paltz was recognized as a bronze-level bike friendly university by the League of American Bicyclists. This award gives New Paltz access to biking resources from the league, which will help New Paltz further develop their bike-friendly campus culture.

The League of American Bicyclists, founded in 1880 as the League of American Wheelmen, is a national organization that seeks to expand biking accessibility. They advocate for bike-friendly policies in Congress, educate people on biking and promote the benefits of biking with campaigns like national bike month. Every year, the league recognizes universities around the country that it deems bike-friendly based on five Es: Equity & Accessibility, Engineering, Education, Encouragement and Evaluation & Planning. To decide who gets recognized, they examine factors like mobile repair services, bike education, bike parking and bikes in the academic curriculum. This year, they recognized 209 institutions of higher education. 

New Paltz’s first accolade from the league was a bike friendly university honorable mention in October 2023. The school’s improved status this year is attributable to the work of the Bike Friendly University Sustainability Ambassador Team, which formed last fall. This team is one of seven student-led teams formed by New Paltz’s Office of Campus Sustainability, and has spent the year focusing on “building engagement and education,” says the team’s leader Michael Hanson, a fourth-year environmental studies major. The team has organized group bike rides and semesterly bike repair cafes and is planning to meet with the university’s Facilities and Construction team to discuss bike infrastructure improvements. Aside from the team, New Paltz also has other biking resources, including a bike repair station and over 230 bike racks. 

However, though New Paltz is definitely bike-friendly, Hanson says there’s still much to be done. His team’s future goals include developing signage on campus that designate the places cyclists are allowed to ride, increasing the number of covered bike racks on campus, making the Student Union Building underpass more bike-friendly “and improving the overall experience for bicyclists on campus through our infrastructure and events.” 

All of these efforts are important because of the many student bikers on campus. Every day, dozens of students bike to class, into town and on nearby trails. New Paltz has access to biking trails including the Empire State Trail, Hudson Valley Rail Trail and the River-to-Ridge Trail, which are open only to cyclists and pedestrians. These trails connect New Paltz to neighboring towns and cities including Rosendale, Kingston and Poughkeepsie, and allow students without cars to explore the surrounding wilderness of Ulster County. 

Students say they love spending their weekends taking advantage of these trails. “Having the rail trail so close to campus has been so much fun. My friends and I have been able to explore neighboring towns like Rosendale without having to have a car on campus,” said first-year creative writing major Ella Joy. 

First-year undeclared student Violet Christensten also emphasized the role that biking has played in her life in New Paltz. She said she wished more New Paltz students would bike because biking is “beneficial for staying healthy and making new friends.” 

While SUNY New Paltz has been expanding biking accessibility, the town of New Paltz has made similar efforts. The town has a Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee made up of local volunteers who work to make New Paltz safer for non-drivers. The committee chair, political science professor Daniel Lipson says there are “so many things” they’ve been doing recently to make New Paltz more accessible for bikers. One recent development has been the Henry W. Dubois Drive Pedestrian and Bicycle Project, which started construction in May 2024. This project will connect two biking trails: Wallkill Valley Rail Trail and the Hudson Valley Rail Trail and will give hikers and cyclists increased access to over 30 miles of forest trails. Lipson said construction should be finished by the end of the year. Other projects have been to expand the shoulders on roads, especially on Route 299. 

The committee is also “starting to do more activism raising awareness about traffic violence,” Lipson said. He said that many students and town residents have told him stories about almost being hit by cars while biking on major roads like Route 299. Since last year’s hit and run death of New Paltz student Raymond Rattray, there has been more discussion about bicycle and pedestrian safety issues, but there’s still much to be done. 

Mike Kilmer, owner of The Bicycle Rack, a bike shop on N. Front Street, echoed Lipson’s complaints about the town’s aggressive drivers. He said that many drivers act like they own the road when really the road should be treated like a public space. One of the biggest problems for New Paltz bikers, according to Kilmer, are the single lane roads in town, especially on Main Street, that have no room for bikers. New shoulders in roads that the Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee is advocating for could help with this. 

Lipson said there have been some recent developments that give him hope. In the past, when the Bicycle-Pedestrian Committee brought new ideas about town improvements to the New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT), their ideas would usually be dismissed as impractical and noncompliant with government regulations. The NYSDOT was often a big hurdle in the committee’s efforts to make positive changes in town. However, recently the NYSDOT has been much more willing to listen to ideas regarding the safety of New Paltz, a trend that Lipson attributed to “the U.S. Department of Transportation under the Biden leadership.” He said that the Biden administration chose environmentalist, climate-focused people to run federal agencies and that those actions have trickled down to the state level and ultimately made the NYSDOT more interested in the environmental and safety policies that the committee suggests. Lipson said that in a recent Zoom meeting he attended with NYSDOT officials, the officials were actually listening to ideas and trying to figure out how the ideas could get done, something he hasn’t seen in the past. “It really makes a difference,” he said.