Group Works To Develop Community Bike Program For Students

By: Lindsay Fetzner

Posted: 2/27/08

Members of the UConn Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), EcoHusky, Office of Environmental Policy (OEP) and ConnPIRG are collaborating to try to bring a community bike program to campus.

The informal group met in Castleman Tuesday night at 8 p.m. to discuss the possibility and logistics of implementing such a program.

The idea to start a community bike program was originally brought up in 2005 when a group of engineering students did a senior design project on a master bike plan at UConn. Within the project, a survey was conducted polling UConn students on whether they would utilize such a program. The overwhelming results showed that students would indeed be interested.

The use of bikes over cars on and around campus would offer many positive outcomes, according to a slide show at the meeting. Reducing on-campus vehicular traffic, decreasing the parking demand and reducing emissions are just a few of the perks to having a more bikes and fewer cars.

"We are hoping to get a bike-sharing program started on campus because it would encourage more sustainable transportation and [cut] greenhouse gas emissions," said Jennifer Sayers, an 8th-semester environmental studies major, member of EcoHusky and OEP intern. "There have been tons of these programs started at other schools as well."

A survey conducted on campus involving roughly 4,000 students estimated that 35 percent of people would utilize the program if it became available, according to Jessica Mortell, an 8th-semester civil engineering major and USG senator.

Some of the first steps in bringing a bike program to UConn are to first create an oversight group. The next steps would be to draft a constitution and elect officers.

"By the end of the semester, we want to create a business proposal to present to the administration and students for different program designs," Mortell said. "My goal is to see an actual pilot program established by the time I graduate in December."

The group hopes to develop a bike network that would include the road, bike paths and bike lanes. The addition of bike racks around campus is also being considered, as is overnight commuter-lot storage, according to Mortell.

Some of the options for the bike program on campus would be allowing students to swipe their ID cards to rent bicycles. A temporary charge would either be put on their account, or applied to their account if they did not return the bicycle.

Other ideas included offering bike rentals from the Student Union, where students could loan them out for certain periods of time if they signed a waiver. A control network with electronic swiping at various parts of campus was also brought up at last night's meeting.

Members of ITE, PIRG and EcoHusky are going to start compiling research they conduct on other schools that have created similar bike programs. In addition, a cost-benefit analysis will be done to see what the best option will be for UConn, which will involve research before any final plan is implemented.

A bike program existed on the UConn campus roughly 30 years ago, but was unsuccessful when many of the bikes ended up in Mirror Lake, Mortell said.

Contact Lindsay Fetzner at

Lindsay.Fetzner@UConn.edu.