My building is an academic building at a 100% residential boarding school. There are walking paths everywhere, students all live within 3/4-mile, and students rarely use bicycles. It seems illogical to include them in the 5% bike calculation, as there's no way that many spaces are needed or would be used. Is this a candidate for special circumstances? Does anyone have experience with this?
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Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11477 thumbs up
January 24, 2011 - 8:33 pm
What is the building used for? Who uses it?
Maura Adams
Environmental Stewardship Manager177 thumbs up
January 25, 2011 - 9:04 am
It's a math/science classroom building used by most students at some point during the school day. 22 FTEs (2 FT staff and 32 teachers there for a portion of the 8-hour day) work there as well.
David Posada
Integrated Design & LEED SpecialistSERA Architects
LEEDuser Expert
1979 thumbs up
February 1, 2011 - 1:15 pm
This isn't a situation addressed clearly in the BD&C Reference guide, since the building types the K-12 Schools rating is based on don't typically have a residential function. Your campus is more similar to a residential college in that sense, so the Application Guide for Multiple Buildings and Campus (Part 1 Oct 2010) might help here:
http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=2326
This updated 2010 document is organized differently than the 2005 guidance document: a Master Site block of overall site credits is set up in LEED Online for the credits that are applied across a whole campus, and then individual buildings are registered as separate blocks for their building-specific credits.
See 1.4 Table 1A for SSc4.2. My understanding is you'll calculate the total # of bike racks for the whole campus based on the campus FTE numbers, but still have to have a pro-rated number of racks near buildings seeking certification. When they say: "The appropriate number of bike racks and showers provided must be within 200 yards of the projects on the shared-site/campus that are attempting LEED certification" it would suggest they want to see the portion of racks (and showers!) for the classroom building's FTE within 200 yards.
Remember, the # of transients is defined as those who occupy the building for less than 7 hours. The number of transients is used for calculating bike racks, but don't have to be provided showers. It's not entirely clear to me, but I believe any full-time staff who work in that building are expected to have showers within 200 yards.
The document also states "Feedback received from project teams that use this guidance is very valuable and will be utilized to inform future versions of the guidance," so I'd encourage you to contact the USGBC or submit a CIR to clarify how the guidance document should be applied to the this credit.