MSU recently was named a Bicycle Friendly University Bronze award winner in mid-March by the League of American Bicyclists. This is the first time the league has given out these awards to universities as part of its Bicycle Friendly America campaign — honoring 20 campuses across the country — and MSU was the only campus in Michigan to earn one, said Tim Potter, MSU Bikes Service Center manager.

According to the league, the program recognizes colleges that create environments where bicycling can thrive and provides a road map and technical assistance to create great campuses for bicycling.

Stanford University was the only university to earn a platinum award — the league’s highest distinction.

MSU is one of only a few universities in the country to have a university-owned-and-operated Bike Service Center, Potter said.

“It’s a really strong asset for us — it helps keep people riding their bikes safely,” he said.

Potter said about half of MSU’s roads have bike lanes, and every time a road is redone, bike lanes are added. In about five years, all campus roads should have bike lanes, he said.

The areas MSU needs to work on to improve its rankings in coming years are education, encouragement and enforcement of bike regulations on campus, Potter said.

Gus Gosselin, director of building services for the MSU Physical Plant, helped form the Bike Service Center with Potter and a few others as a volunteer project in 2003. It was formalized into a university-owned center in 2006 after the team presented a business plan to Fred Poston, vice president for finances and operations, he said.

Gosselin said he bikes to all his meetings on campus as well as the 22-mile distance between his home and work three days a week from May to September.

“It’s the best way to get around campus,” he said.

Patricia Weiss, vice president of the MSU Cycling Club, said she uses her bike to get to many of her classes on campus. She said she appreciates all of the bike lanes on campus but is glad the university is adding more.

Educating cyclists and motorists on the rules of the road also is key, she said. Cyclists legally are supposed to ride in the road and are not allowed to ride on sidewalks — generally following the same rules as cars, Weiss said.

“Plenty of people have told me to get off the road,” she said, adding that a few of her friends have been hit by cars while biking. “People still aren’t aware as they should be.”

Although the MSU Bikes Service Center has done a good job of creating a “bike culture” on campus, Baumann said it also is important to enforce traffic rules on cyclists — such as giving cyclists a ticket for running a red light or not yielding to pedestrians, he said.

And even in inclement weather, Baumann said biking in Michigan still is an option. When the university shut down for a snow day earlier this semester, he still braved the roads on two wheels to get to a meeting at Kellogg Center — adding it was an easier ride than he expected.

“There were no cars on the road,” he said.