Alex Dreyer (left) and Mary Crocker have spent the summer collecting, restoring and painting bikes for use in NIU's new BikeMe! program. Photo by Joe King.

BikeMe! aims
to put campus
wheels in motion

by Joe King

For those on campus bemoaning the excess of autos and paucity of parking, Bob Albanese has the following suggestion: BikeMe!

That’s not an insult, but rather the name of a new program NIU hopes will help reduce automobile traffic around campus, says Albanese, associate vice president for Finance and Facilities and director of the Physical Plant.

“We’re not kidding ourselves into believing that making 25 bikes available will solve our parking shortage,” Albanese says, “but if each bike is used just 10 times a day, that would be 250 fewer automobiles driving across campus and looking for a parking space, so it should help.”

The two-wheelers all are stripped-down mountain bikes, reduced to a single gear for ease of maintenance and painted Huskie red. To further identify them, each has a BikeMe! license tag.

Bikes will be scattered across campus, left unlocked and made available for anyone to ride. The only stipulations are that the rider stay on campus and leave the bike in a bike rack or other public place for others to use.

Similar programs have been successful in Madison, Wis., where the program is run by a local bike shop, and in Austin, Texas, where the program is run by the city. Albanese is hopeful that it enjoy similar response here.

“The success of this program will be entirely up to students, but I think it will catch on,” Albanese says. “You see a lot more bikes on campus now than you did just a few years ago.”

He expects the initiative will prove particularly popular with students who need to make longer trips quickly – such as from residence halls to the central campus, or between the central campus and more distant facilities such as Barsema Hall or the College of Engineering and Engineering Technology.

Should too many bikes start stacking up at any one location, Building and Grounds employees periodically will redistribute them around campus.

Keeping track of the fleet of bikes and keeping the program rolling will be Mary Crocker, director of Recycling Services. She and student worker Alex Dreyer, a senior in mechanical engineering, spent the summer collecting bikes from donors, garage sales and even Dumpsters.

With assistance from DeKalb Cyclery and Blue Moon Bikes in Sycamore, which have provided parts at discount prices and donated some services, Dreyer has been restoring and painting the bikes. Twenty-five of the bright red bikes will be ready to roll when students return, and Albanese says that number eventually could double if their use thrives.

Crocker hopes the program can expand its fleet by choosing from the supply of lost, stolen and abandoned bikes accrued by campus police each year. To date, such frugality has kept the cost of the program at about $1,500, and Crocker hopes to offset those costs and find future funding through grants and other sources.

8-18-03