Washington and Lee University students say Lexington’s lack of bikeable infrastructure makes cycling a challenge.
“I learned how to bike right before coming to Washington and Lee because I remember hearing that it was really bikeable and that there’s beautiful trails around,” said Ameera Mustafa, ’28. “I volunteer on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I can make what would have been a 20-minute walk a 10-minute bike ride.”
But Mustafa said Lexington’s street design complicates the journey. “Some of our sidewalks are really thin, which can make it really difficult to bike beside someone who is walking,” Mustafa said. “That really discourages me from [biking] sometimes.”
On campus, bike storage is limited, and students say they often store their bikes in non-designated areas.
“I store my bike outside of Gaines near the crosswalk,” said Yoong Wen Chong, ’28, who lives in Gaines Hall. “I do wish there was proper bike parking there because the designated parking in Gaines is on the ground level, so it doesn’t make sense for people who actually ride bikes to store them there.” This parking is located indoors and below the first floor of Gaines, making it inconvenient for students who use their bikes regularly to access them.
Students say that a large bike rack outside Graham-Lees Hall is usually unavailable. “The bike rack that is in between Glees and the gym is always full,” said Lucas Neel, ’28, a Graham-Lees resident. “The little plastic [bike racks] all over campus would be nice.”
Downtown Lexington also tends to run short on storage space. There are only a few bike racks located in town.
The city’s Department of Planning and Development has worked to make Lexington more bikeable. But issues in the town’s geography make this difficult, according to Lexington Director of Planning and Development, Arne Glaeser. Lexington’s topography features steep and rough terrain that may not feel attainable to all cyclists, Glaeser said.
Narrow roads pose another challenge. “It’s going to be more difficult for us to improve bikeability within the area because we don’t have room for separated bike lanes,” Glaeser said. “It would be lovely to have something like that, but we don’t have the space.”
The resources available for improving bikeability are also limited. The city sets aside $40,000 a year for sidewalk repairs and extensions, according to Glaeser, but these resources are not specifically dedicated to bike use. “Unfortunately we do not, to my knowledge, have any sort of allotment specifically for bikes each year other than what we are trying to accomplish through grants,” said Glaeser.
The planning and development department found ways to work around these challenges. In 2022, grant funding from the Virginia Department of Transportation provided the resources to write up a plan for improving bikeability and walkability in Lexington, Glaeser said. This plan includes adding sidewalks near Maury River Middle School.
The city obtained another grant six years ago through Smart Scale, a grant designed to help towns in Virginia improve their transportation infrastructure, to build bike lanes on North Main Street from Stop In Food Stores to Virginia Military Institute. Glaeser said this project is estimated to take seven months to complete, but he said he was unsure about the construction start date.
