This fall, Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., is offering freshmen free mountain bikes, helmets and locks in exchange for a promise not to bring a car to campus. The $300-per-student cost is funded by private donations. The college's president, David Joyce, says the project was meant to avoid building a parking garage, but its side effects are beneficial: less pollution, more exercise and savings on gas. The timing was right, Joyce says: "We were either extremely brilliant or extremely lucky." About 60% of the school's 300 incoming students have signed up.

At Auburn University in Auburn, Ala., a bike maintenance shop in the new student union and a bike-sharing program kicks off this fall. High gas prices have helped the school meet its goal of increasing bike ridership to 12% of students and staff two years ahead of schedule.

Other bike-loan programs will start or expand this year at colleges in Georgia, Illinois, Maine and Pennsylvania. For example, graduate students at State University of New York-Albany proposed a 5K (3.1-mile) biking and walking path around campus as a class project. The first phase, one-third of a mile, was completed in June.

Faculty and students at three high schools in Marin County, Calif., are working with their local Safe Routes to Schools program to improve intersections, designate walk-or-bike-to-school days and use bikes as transportation for field trips.

The National Center for Safe Routes to School gets state and federal funding for kindergarten through eighth grade. A bill sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., would fund high school programs. High schools' wider attendance boundaries, students' reduced physical activity and their desire to be self-reliant make funding necessary, he says.