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Environmental Studies Department |
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The Mac Weekly - April 29, 2005 Bike Share Program Provides Students with Environmentally Sound Transportation By Michael Grove, Contributing Writer
Run by members of Mac Bike, the Bike Share program is staffed by volunteers and funded by Macalester College Student Government (MCSG). The program, focused on making bicycles available to all members of the Macalester community, including students, staff, and faculty, offers week-long rentals at no charge and loans out helmets and locks in addition to bicycles. Organizers say the program has been a great success so far, so much so that they are having trouble keeping up with demand. The program has been operating from a temporary desk on Bateman Plaza on Fridays for the past three weeks. Using bikes purchased from the Sibley Bike Depot and maintained by the Mac Bike organization, the Bike Share offers these bikes for rental, asking only that students sign forms detailing their intent to return the bike they borrow the following week. The Bike Share program currently has eight bikes, and is planning to purchase ten more for next year. Also, the program will have a special bike rack outside of the Campus Center, courtesy of Campus Programs. However, the program currently has a somewhat haphazard framework. In addition to maintaining their own paperwork, the student volunteers work without a permanent location. Claire Stoscheck ’07, one of the primary organizers of the Bike Share program, said she would like to establish a permanent location and record storage area at the information desk in the Campus Center. According to Stoscheck, this would not only make management easier for the volunteers, it would also be a step towards establishing the permanency of the program. However, Stoscheck and the rest of the Mac Bike Share volunteers said they have encountered resistance thus far. “It wouldn’t be a lot more work for this to be integrated into the Campus Center or another permanent space on campus, but whenever there’s a change, we need to prove student support,” Stoscheck said. “It’s difficult to prove the critical mass [of support] which the administration wants, since they haven’t been specific as to what would convince them.” “We don’t need much physical space, we just need a permanent home,” she said. Stoscheck said she urges students to show their support for the program. While she said that Bike Share has proven extremely successful in the hands of a few volunteers, administrative support would allow it to become a permanent fixture on the Macalester Campus, one which would allow students to travel easily and inexpensively around the Twin Cities. |
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