Author Topic: Green bikes coming back? (Read 10350 times)

Sal Atticum · « **on:** February 23, 2009, 09:44:24 AM »

From a story in the Herald this morning, it looks like the Green Bike program is going to attempt to make a comeback, this time with city support. I still don't know how they are going to do this, but I really think that we should be involved (at least in an advisory capacity) to help them understand what they are getting themselves into, and how they should actually be educating the people who use the bikes.

Quote

‘Green bike’

One effort the city wants to help student government with is the “Green Bike” project, [City Council President Hal] Gershman told the senators.

Sen. Kyle Wanner explained that he helped start it a year ago to make bicycles available for students to ride to class, or around the community.

About 34 bikes were donated by UND police from impounded ones, and a few others were donated from community members, Wanner said. The idea is to use maintenance-friendly single-speed bikes, painted green, as “free-to-borrow,” transportation that is good for the environment and the health of the community, he said.

A student could take any green bike found unused, and leave it somewhere else to be used by another student, he said.

After it began last April, the project fizzled out because there weren’t enough people involved, he said. He’s hoping to start it up again this spring and asked the city to donate used bikes. Police Chief John Packett was at the meeting Sunday and promised his department would work with students to provide some of the bicycles impounded by police. Wanner said he hopes community members would consider donating bikes to the UND project.

There are about 10 of the three dozen bicycles used a year ago still stored on campus; most of the other bikes apparently were stolen, lost or ruined, he said.

He got the idea from other universities, and in some cases the “free-to-borrow” bike idea spread to an entire community, Wanner said.

"There weren't enough people involved" glosses over a lot of problems. No people to work on the bikes, no people to help keep track of the bikes, and no money to cover the cost of repairs all contributed to this problem. Compound that with a general lack of respect for stuff that isn't yours and you get the results of the Green Bikes program.

You've got to get people to understand how to ride bikes before you can get them to ride bikes. Nobody is going to jump on a crappy Wal*Mart bike that's too small, ride it to class, and say "gee, that was really fun, I should ride my bike more often."

Plantains · « **Reply #1 on:** February 23, 2009, 10:39:02 AM »

Chad... I know this one hits close to home, and I think Kyle is a cool dude...

But seriously, I think this article is a joke. Considering that 80% of the work that was done was done by members of our club, and we were recruited in with literally a weeks notice and expected to drop everything at the beginning of our race season to help with this.

It further saddens me that this now seems like it was more of a campaign strategy than actually giving a shit about the environment or trying to make campus life better overall which should have been evident by the half assedness of the project.

I'm also extremely displeased by some of the other comments that were made during that meeting such as "Grand forks wouldn't be grand forks without the students and the students wouldn't be here if it weren't for grand forks"

While I understand that there is a symbiotic relationship here... I don't think it's wise to tell the community leaders that they SHOULD help us out because they need us.

Why are you going to beg for more bicycles to put into a system that clearly needs to be fixed? Maybe work on some of the points (a key one that beek highlighted) before you provide more pollution for the river.

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #2 on:** February 23, 2009, 11:10:27 AM »

O, that Kyle Wanner.

I do think it's a good idea. I just don't see the support.

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #3 on:** March 03, 2009, 09:01:35 AM »

I like this plan better.

http://today.appstate.edu/boone-bicycle-initiative/

Toaster · « **Reply #4 on:** March 08, 2009, 02:33:49 PM »

This seems like a much better idea. I don't think this would work for the green bikes because it would require actual support/commitment/work, and it seems to me like the green bike thing is only a way to expand your resume. When you fix up a few bikes into a mediocre state of functionality and then just dump them all over the campus never to think about them again, you're not going to do much in the way of increasing cycling on campus.

Plantains · « **Reply #5 on:** March 08, 2009, 02:41:41 PM »

Considering their top priority was what color to paint them...

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #6 on:** March 20, 2009, 09:54:42 AM »

This crap pisses me off. They turn this into a political argument. How is cycling a political argument?

FOR THE RECORD: In Paris you have to swipe a credit card. If you don't bring the bicycle back, you just bought it. The first link below gets this wrong.

http://www.kxmc.com/News/Nation/338037.asp

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/shocker_transportation_communism_fails

I didn't know NDSU was/is trying this as well. A partnership, perhaps?

I'm also unaware of the money situation--did student government and wellness really pay for all this? How much? That part I can agree with--they put money into green bicycles and then they have NO PLAN for keeping track of them and for upkeep.

Like before, what we need instead of more bicycles is for people to know how to actually take care of and ride the bicycles they already hauled to school (and will leave there at the end of the year because they are utter losers)*. HOW DO WE DO THIS? I'm open to suggestions.

I still think lobbying housing for internal storage space would be ideal or, better yet, getting sponsors/contributors to fund us (UND Cycling Club, yes, really physically our members) building some bicycle rack covers/sheds (~12' square roofs with three sides of lattice or something). That will have to come at the same time as our efforts to get more people riding, of course.

*What. the. Hell. Seriously, they buy a crappy bicycle at WalMart, haul it to UND, chain it up for a year in the rain and snow, and then leave the thing at the end of the semester, probably because "it doesn't work no more." Of COURSE it doesn't work, you freaking idiot! Tha chain is rusted solid!

Plantains · « **Reply #7 on:** March 20, 2009, 11:45:02 AM »

My ideas were:

Cycling literature should be distributed to anyone who buys a parking pass. How/where to ride. How/where to get a bike. etc. etc. SINCE the bike "recovery" has become parkings problem anyways, I bet they'd do this no problem.

The bikes should have parking zones. Like a green handicapped spot. If you're going to be taking a bike to class for convenience it would be convenient to know where they are. The GBP liked this idea, but they half assed it as well. They listed the spots the bikes should be at on this flyer that had so much crap all over it it was crazy. I mentioned that no student is going to read this and they didn't care, they were like... well... its on there so... they will read it.

I don't understand the leaving behind of bicycles either. Another idea I wanted to do was a tune up. We could do basic maintenence on anyones bike during a said time period for free. If they needed more serious tunes, refer them to the shop, and give them like a 10% off coupon or something.

Sigh...

Plantains · « **Reply #8 on:** March 20, 2009, 11:52:21 AM »

Also BEEK thats what the buffalo blue bicycle did, which I mentioned. They used a registration to be able to utilize the bike for a day. This idea is still (I think) a great idea for a program with limited bicycles, and limited funding. People can register for free, and they can "take out" a bike from a number of locations for say .50 cents/day. That way, less of the bikes get totally destroyed because we A. know who has them (to a certain extent) and B. it requires a LITTLE bit of effort to acquire a bike. The .50 gets you a key to a lock? I dunno man...

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #9 on:** March 20, 2009, 02:15:41 PM »

I think it would be worthwhile, as long as there was either a) funding for someone to man the bicycle-borrowing station (since club doesn't have enough members and SG doesn't volunteer, even though volunteering like that could go on your resume) or b) an automated system (even swipe a student ID = a key drops out of a slot, and some return mechanism) to take care of letting people use the bicycles easily. Adding this into one of the things UND does (by going through the Union or something silly like that) is just going to be a bureaucratic nightmare and a waste of money that could be spent on paying people to repair things.

Honestly, I think we should have a tune-up day every week at a specified time. We'd be promoting cycling culture and getting to talk to people who are either already riding or want to be riding.

Plantains · « **Reply #10 on:** March 20, 2009, 04:40:36 PM »

Beek. I'm telling you, I'll work with u 100% on these. Im not saying that in the traditional UNDCC way of "I'll work with you" but that means, you do all the work and I'll show up when I'm needed.

Maybe we can discuss this further.

I'll tell u 1 thing. This club needs to do SOMETHING, because I can't tolerate being a drain on society.

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #11 on:** October 30, 2009, 11:35:02 AM »

Looks like SDSU is thinking about the same thing (from just a week ago): http://stateandlocal.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/bike-sharing-possibilities/
If it's not clear, State and Local is a division of the SDSU Student Association (= Student Government).

What happened with this? There is this eternal "let's do green bikes" from Wellnes and SG, but I don't think anything has happened this semester even though we talked to that one girl before a ride back in August.

By the way, if anyone from SDSU reads this, get in touch with us about starting (or resurrecting) a cycling team.

Plantains · « **Reply #12 on:** October 30, 2009, 02:28:20 PM »

Green bikes. They only care during elections.

chilean_luv · « **Reply #13 on:** November 01, 2009, 03:34:25 PM »

They'll probably end up at the bottom of the Cooli like the old ones did, and probably mine

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #14 on:** November 01, 2009, 03:59:01 PM »

On that note . . . who's up for bicycle fishing?

Flutterbye · « **Reply #15 on:** November 01, 2009, 06:18:10 PM »

I like to do both of those

although never thought of combining them- I'm in!!

LOL

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #16 on:** November 30, 2009, 03:08:46 PM »

The Wellness Center page looks like it's back up: http://wellness.und.edu/?page=146
I haven't seen any green bicycles around lately though.

On a related note, the idea of a community bike workshop has come up a few times recently. The first thing people say is "Can we get all the old bikes that UPD/Grand Forks PD picks up every year?" and I have no answer for them. Maybe somebody who is ~~on the mysterious "Green Bike Committee" at UND~~ in SWAC knows how this all works and could explain it to the rest of us.

From what I've seen, I thought UPD gave all the abandoned bicycles to the Green Bikes project, but I just got an email from someone who claims that UND just recycled a crapload of material from such bicycles, so I'm not sure who to believe. If this is the case, a community workshop could step in and get leftovers, since the GBP is obviously not using them, no matter how many shiny photos they have up on the WC website (can you tell I'm getting more cynical about the whole deal?).

I'm going to shoot a quick email to SWAC Chair Danielle Refsland to see what the status of this program is. I don't have a problem with them not doing anything, just that everyone is sitting around waiting for them to do something they've been promising for a while now, instead of taking matters into their own hands and getting something done.

Chopped Liver · « **Reply #17 on:** November 30, 2009, 04:28:28 PM »

UPD doesn't pick up bikes anymore unless they have a specific reason and they usually have to keep them until a specific event or amount of time passes, and the person I talked to there made it sound like they didn't wind up with many leftover bikes. I supposed someone else might have a different answer, but who knows. Any "abandoned" bikes on campus are picked up by the grounds crew and tossed in a pile somewhere behind their building. A couple of weeks ago I talked to a guy at RMI who said that UND had hauled in a load of bikes, "over a ton of metal on just the first load", so I did some snooping around campus and wound up talking to the guy that hauled them over to RMI. He said they had asked around and no one wanted them so they threw the seats and tires (good or not) in a dumpster and recycled the rest. Later that day the administrator in charge of the recovered bikes returned by phone call and he said pretty much the same thing - there were a whole bunch and they are all gone.

Would the GBP shut down in the winter? If not, how much of a pain in the butt would the snow cause for that? I think my interest in helping the GBP would decline quickly when they wind up getting abused, and I probably wouldn't be alone.

On the flip side, looking at the success of the Fargo-Moorhead Community Bike Shop, something like that would be a little slower to get going and would/should become more stable with time as long as there is a solid core of a few committed people to keep things on track.

Sal Atticum · « **Reply #18 on:** November 30, 2009, 05:40:47 PM »

I'm waiting to hear back about the status of the GBP. As you can see above, there are some other ideas that, if funded, would result in a lot less abuse.

Wow, that's such a waste. No chance those bicycles escaped getting crushed up to now?

Chopped Liver · « **Reply #19 on:** December 01, 2009, 02:43:37 AM »

I'm sorry to say they were crushed pretty quickly. I went out there looking for some cheap parts and they said I just missed out on a huge supply.

I did find a mid-60's Schwinn Typhoon 24" banana seat cruiser to restore though. The 10 bikes I already had just weren't enough.