Nine dollars and 30 cents for a full tank of premium-grade gasoline.
It sounds like highway robbery during this time of loaded gas prices, but $9.30 is the most East Tennessee State University senior Jonathan Franklin has paid since he decided to park his car and rev up his motorcycle.
“I get 40 to 50 miles a gallon,” Franklin said, preparing to board his Honda Shadow Friday afternoon.
With the recent leap in fuel costs, Franklin is one of a growing number of students on the ETSU campus who is choosing to drive motorcycles or bicycles in an effort to save money at the pump.
“Last year, there were about five motorcycles parked here,” Franklin said, gesturing to his choice parking spot at the side of Rogers-Stout Hall. “On Wednesday, I counted 12.”
Bicycle racks are also filling up, said ETSU student Erin Scowden.
“I know more people are riding bikes, because I almost couldn’t find a place to park this morning,” Scowden said Friday. “[The bike rack in front of the library] was full.”
Scowden, who has lived in larger cities like Dayton and Cincinnati, Ohio, said public transportation is another option to high fuel costs, but she’s found it to be confusing and largely inadequate in this region.
It may be why local bike shops are also seeing an increase in traffic to their stores.
“We had two or three students come in today,” said Hal Range early Friday afternoon from Two Wheel Transit Bicycles on South Roan Street.
Range, who is filling in to help out the shop’s hospitalized owner, said store traffic has picked up in the past couple of weeks, and nearly everyone who comes in mentions the high cost of gas as a primary reason for buying a bike.
Those looking for a good campus bike should check out hybrids, Range said. They’re a popular choice because of a wider tire that can be driven off-road or on.
But as the number of bikes on campus increases, so do the number of bicycle thefts, said Public Safety Chief Jack Cotrel Friday.
Cotrel reminded students to register their bikes with campus safety officials.
“It’s completely free,” he said. “Without that, recovery, especially of a bicycle, is nearly impossible.”
Cotrel also said drivers of bikes and motorcycles are subject to the same rules of the road as drivers of automobiles.
“With an increase in bikes, the community can expect an increase in the enforcement of the rules,” he said. “For instance, bikes shouldn’t be driven on the sidewalks – it’s just common-sense-type things.”
Even as fuel prices level off, Scowden hopes some students were shocked into awareness of their own fossil-fuel dependency and its subsequent drain on personal finances and the environment.
“I think it’s a good thing,” she said. “I wish more students would do it.”

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