IUSA may begin bike rental program

During the past few years, an increasing number of bike rental programs have appeared at universities across the country. Now, IU is trying to implement one of its own.

The IU Student Association is in the process of establishing a bike rental system that would allow students to borrow a bike for a certain amount of time to get around campus.

Peter SerVaas, IUSA president, said the bike rental program seemed like the proper solution to provide an option other than “circling campus on a bus” and walking.

Ben Schulte, IUSA’s chief of the bike rental program, said he thinks the bike rental program could be a success at IU with enough work.

IUSA members are setting up meetings with administrators and suppliers to get the bike rental program started, Schulte said.

The IUSA’s current plan for the program is tentative, pending the approval of IU administrators. IUSA members are trying to convince administrators to “see things the way we’re seeing them” in order to gain support, Schulte said.

Students will be the primary focus of the bike rental program, but if administrators think faculty and staff should also be included, it might happen, Schulte said.

If IUSA’s bike rental plan is accepted, bikes would be accessed through a swipe card.

Schulte said they considered using student IDs for the program, but decided against it since they’re often lost or stolen. By linking a separate ID card to a credit card, rather than bursar accounts, people would have to take the proactive step of signing up, Schulte said.

To be issued an ID, students would have to sign a waiver accepting full responsibility for the bike and its use.

While the bike rental would originally be free, Schulte said they’d like to impose a time limit on how long someone can have a rental. If a student had a bike past it’s return time, their credit card would be charged a fee.

Linking the IDs to a payment system will help IUSA account for damages to the bikes. Their initial proposal involves teaming with either a local bike shop or someone who can come in and do the repairs all at once, Schulte said. This would be cheaper than constantly having to employ someone who could fix the bikes, he added.

While some schools have used donated bikes in their programs, Schulte said IUSA decided a standardized model would better suit their purposes. The initial cost would be greater, but it’d be easier to fix one type of bike than many.

Schulte mentioned they might try to make the bikes noticeable to prevent stealing. IUSA has considered purchasing bikes with GPS chips on them, Schulte said. It would be a “huge” investment but could prevent theft in the long run, he said.

IUSA will propose that the bikes should be unavailable at night and during the winter because of safety concerns, Schulte said.

IUSA would implement a large fee to those who don’t return their bike by a certain time, in order to “deter people from either drinking and riding the bikes or riding in the dark when it’s potentially a lot more dangerous,” Schulte said.

Also, IUSA is creating guidelines about where students are allowed to ride the bikes. Schulte said they’d like to prevent students from taking the bikes on main roads and encourage them to avoid “reckless situations.”

IUSA already has some money ready to start the program. Members are working with Neil Theobald, IU’s chief financial officer, to apply for grants, SerVaas said. The amount of funding will help members decide whether to start a small rental program within the next year or wait a while to ensure that it becomes full-scale, he said.

Before IUSA members were elected, they met with Kent McDaniel, executive director of IU Transportation Services, and Doug Porter, director of Parking Operations, to discuss the program, SerVaas said.

IUSA hasn’t done any research on how many IU students would use the bikes, but Schulte said he thinks starting with 250 to 500 people would put them on the right track.

“I don’t think popularity will be anything we’ll be shy on,” he said. “We’re going to start out relatively small to keep costs down and also to test the success of the program.”