Platinum-level Bike Friendly University (BFU)

We've won top honors for bike-friendly campus!

Our students love to cycle and that’s no accident! We’re lucky our campus is so bicycle friendly.

We’ve been awarded an elite distinction - “Platinum-level Bike Friendly University (BFU)! UC Santa Barbara twice before, in 2011 and 2015, was rated at the Gold level. With the announcement today of 48 new and renewing BFUs across the country, UCSB cements its place in a cutting-edge group of U.S. higher-education institutions transforming their campuses and the communities around them. There are now 208 BFUs in 47 states and Washington, D.C.

The League of American Bicyclists — the oldest and only grassroots advocacy organization for people who bike — awards select, applying colleges and universities in recognition of institutions’ achievements in promoting and enabling safe, accessible bicycling on campus. Designations are good for four years.

The Bicycle Friendly University program evaluates applicants’ efforts to promote bicycling in five primary areas: engineering, encouragement, education, enforcement and evaluation/planning. 

Of the total 208 campuses named Bike Friendly Universities in the 2019 ratings, only 4% of them — just eight institutions nationwide — are designated platinum. And three of them are UC campuses: Santa Barbara, Davis and Irvine.

Among the factors that were key to the new, top-level designation: the campus’s still-young bike share program. Launched in fall 2018, UCSB Sustainability partnered with myriad entities — Associated Students BIKE Committee, Transportation and Parking Services, the purchasing department, the County of Santa Barbara, the cities of Santa Barbara and of Goleta, SBCAG, Santa Barbara Bicycle Coalition, Santa Barbara Waterfront and Santa Barbara City College — to get it done.

UC Santa Barbara students choose bicycles more than any other means of transportation, with 55% of undergraduates riding to campus on any given day (walking is a distant second, at 21 percent). Among the overall campus population, an approximate 46% ride their bikes.

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