In prehistory hominids started off on all fours and eventually started walking on two. This was one of our great evolutionary leaps. It meant people could do things with their front legs (now known as arms), like carry a spear and kill things.

A similar transition is starting to occur on college campuses as more and more universities encourage their students to stop using four-wheeled cars and use two-wheeled bicycles instead.

Okay, the analogy to classical Darwinian evolution may be a bit strained. Still, the reality is that bicycles are better adapted to campus life than automobiles. They're silent and non-polluting. They also deliver people door to door, instead of requiring them to schlep that last mile (or however far from the parking lot). They're very affordable, no small matter for students on a tight budget. Last but not least, they can shrink the transportation footprint dramatically, with bike paths instead of roads and bike parking racks replacing parking lots.

At Ripon College in Wisconsin, incoming freshmen who pledge to leave their cars at home receive free bicycles. About 180 students signed up for the program.

The University of New England in Biddeford, Maine launched a similar program and only 25% of incoming freshmen brought cars with them, compared to about 75% previously.

At Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, fifty bikes can be rented for free at six campus locations. The university has also teamed with a local bike store enabling students to buy bicycles at a discount and receive essential accessories like a lock and helmet for free from the university.

Programs are also going high-tech. St. Xavier University in Chicago is launching a computer-controlled bike-sharing system. Students use their ID card to unlock the bikes. The first fifteen minutes are free and students are billed at $0.60 per fifteen minutes thereafter. A GPS-like system tracks the bicycles’ location, making thievery a really bad idea.

The New York Times quotes Julian Dautremont-Smith, associate director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education: “It seems like every week we hear about a new bike sharing or bike rental program.”