gwd

I don't know, when I attended UF biking was so common that a bike rental program would seem like a waste, as the first comment says. Some students who drove to campus, hauled a bike in their cars or kept one locked on campus. I don't know what its like today, maybe students are more car-centric now than they were.

https://www.alligator.org/articles/20...29_bicycle.txt

https://media.www.thenews.org/media/s...-3516646.shtml

jgedwa

Like the rest of the country, students are incredibly car-centric. The very idea of walking from building to building for classes (at my school this is perhaps as far as 1/8 of a mile) is utterly foreign to many students. But, like anyone else, they get used to using their feet pretty quickly.

The University where I work is slowly and sneakily getting rid of most parking on campus. They are not really saying anything about it, but every year there is less parking. I think there are no more student parking spots on campus. But there are large "commuter" lots on the edge of campus they have to use.

If we forbid students from having cars in their first few years we loose prospective students. But if we allow them to have cars and give them nowhere to park that is useful for their daily lives, those students enroll, then get lots of tickets, then complain, then deal with it. Really a pretty good solution, if you ask me.

jim

Pedaleur

Just the other day, as I was riding my bike across campus (only about 700m), I was thinking about how I'm too damn lazy to walk.

Nick The Great

I find this strange. I went to Iowa State University, a big time Agriculture and Engineering School. But we had a "closed" campus, isolated campus or whatever you call it. No driving on campus (besides official vehicles & buses) You could drive to the "commuter lot" and park your car. But it was probably 2 or 3 miles to campus. I walked every day to class, but my walk was only 1.5 or 2 miles at the most.

ISU is where I learned to hate bicyclists. I saw girls knocked down by some jack-nut on a bike, slaloming between pedestrians.

My Dad says if he "ran a university" he'd buy a bunch of really old, really crappy bikes and paint them bright orange or something. They'd be community bikes. You ride it to class, and park it. Then someone else leaves their class, grabs the bike and takes off. Besides the obvious maintenance and thievery issues, it's kinda an interesting theory.

Diomedes

We've got that at the University of West Florida. Its called the "Yellow Bike Program", and it works as follows:

At the end of every spring term, students move out, and a good deal of them leave bikes locked up in front of the residence halls. Any bikes left past a specified date are cut loose and confiscated, and then are fixed up, painted yellow, covered with requisite warning stickers, and released to their individual dooms on campus.

Its a great program in theory, but realistically, the bikes that get left and confiscated are the crappiest of the crappy, and once they are a community bike, students feel free to abuse them with impunity. I pretty much run the maintenance side of things, and I've lost track of the number of destroyed bikes that I've dealt with.
Wheels get tacoed on a daily basis, tires go flat and boneheads ride them until the rims are destroyed.
Bored freshmen ride the bikes down hills, bail at the bottom, and watch the bikes smash into walls.
Clueless students take the full-suspension BSO's out onto the local trails and attempt to take jumps with them- its surprising no one has been seriously injured doing that- I pulled one in the other day with the fork folded out to the front from (presumably) a drop to flat.
Just the other week, I discovered that someone has been cutting the brake cables on bikes.
And of course, they do get stolen.

Even with all of that, its a great PR success, and ensures that the cycling club gets a decent budget from SGA (The Cycling Club is responsible for maintenance), so we'll keep the program at least until the funding runs out.

Currently investigating a source for really cheap, really strong (I know, I know, this would mean really heavy, should such a thing exist...) wheels, preferably singlespeed with a coaster brake. (so the vandals cannot cut the brake cables...)

Tinuz

Wouldn't it be possible to weld some iron/steel tube inside the rim? Drill holes on the correct spot, and you have an indestructible wheel.
About theft: Engrave something on the bike or use something very distinctive and difficult to remove. If it gets found anywhere with a lock, you can cut it loose and bring it back (Talk with local law enforcement about this).
About crazy jumping: 1) Put a sign on the bike: "no jumping, serious risk of injury". 2) Bend the seatpost slightly backwards (i.e. put a curve in it). If an idiot jumps with it, the seat bends back and they crack their nuts. If word gets out, people will stop doing it.

And finally, riding on rims....well, you can't do much about that beyond make the tires/tubes as leak proof as possible.

sykerocker 

Build 'em as best you can, and don't try to make them unbreakable or unstealable - there will always be some a**hole who'll figure a way around your efforts, if only for the sake of doing it and knowing he's pissing someone off.

sykerocker 

All good ideas, and they'll all be easily defeated by anyone who wants to take, er, waste the time to sabotage your efforts. And it's usually not for any real reason, just to show what smart asses they are.

frymaster

and driving cars is easily sabotaged by someone scattering caltrops on the expressway.

so?

if every plan had to be perfectly bulletproof before we embarked on it, we'd never accomplish anything.

folder fanatic

Been there, done that as far as similar bike sharing/rental programs here in my neck of the woods. Always failed because people steal the bikes, no matter what they are painted or chipped. It is up to the students to buy and use their own bikes. They would care better for them in the end. And not attract so much campus theft from their own student body or from the surrounding community.

Diomedes

I've pretty much decided that the long range plan is to make the bikes as boring and simple as possible. This means singlespeed with a coaster brake only, as strong and heavy as we can reasonably make them, and as ugly as we can make them without the university disowning us (we are already pretty well along on the last part).

Never again will I turn any full suspension BSO, or for that matter, any bike with suspension, into a yellow bike- people assume that they can do things they were not made to do, and we end up spending far to much time fixing them.

@ Tinuz: Believe me, they have warning stickers on them. Multiple warning stickers. Bright red warning stickers. Makes no difference.

I'd also NOT willfully sabotage a bike- WAAAAY to much potential liability there, and besides, things break enough without us helping them along. Seatposts get expensive after a while.

As for the rims- I'm not sure what you mean by welding a steel tube inside the rim? A good deal of rims are aluminum, so that would never work on those... and I cannot imagine how it would work even on a ferrous rim. Even if it somehow did work, it I cannot see it ever being worth the trouble and time.

We do already cut locks though. If someone has the gall to put a lock on a yellow bike, they can kiss that lock goodbye.

We've also started engraving ID numbers on the bottom bracket with dremel tool. Used to rely on the paint, but I'm pretty sure that I've seen a few of the missing nicer ones running around with new paintjobs.
At least someone has a bike, and if they care (or are desperate enough) to steal it and paint it, they are probably actually going to use it. Still annoys the crap out of me though.

gascostalot

What is sad is that the parking lot is usually bigger then the campus itself, so in the end the student are walking 3 or more blocks to classes anyways.

mackerel

I hate students

sykerocker 

Bingo! That's the answer. You're only providing transporation, not style nor entertainment. At this point, all you're going to end up dealing with is the stupidly inept (they'll be with us, always) and the sick f***s who'll damage your efforts for whatever their reasons - assuming hey have any.

Sounds like a very workable plan. Good luck.

Buck Naked

Ahh I miss my days in Gainesville!!! My first 2 years of school there all I had was a bike. I then got a car but only used it when I went home to visit the folks or when I found some reason to visit the other side of town.