Bike owners on campus could have more service options if a plan to expand MSU Bikes Service Center gains momentum.
The center is located in Bessey Hall. The service center repairs, rents and leases bikes.
Tim Potter, the marketing and sales coordinator of the service center, talked to the Residence Halls Association, or RHA, Wednesday to discuss different locations to bring bicycle services closer to students. He asked RHA to provide $2,000 for tools to be used in the proposed repair shops in three residence halls.
RHA President Lindsay Palinsky said a committee within RHA will most likely discuss the issue, but as of now, there is no decision about providing money for new facilities.
Potter said the expansion plan would include one location in McDonel Hall, one in South Complex and another in Brody — covering all areas of campus. The plan also calls for the creation of a mobile repair trailer in the spring that would travel around campus to help students who have trouble with their bikes, Potter said.
This winter, the shop is going to try to repair bikes in one day so students can pick them up the next day, said Matt Jaglowski, head mechanic at the center and a food industry management senior.
Currently, the repair time varies for bikes, he added.
"Sometimes biking is a student's only form of transportation," Jaglowski said.
There are six students who are paid to repair bikes.
"I have always been interested in bikes," Hogan said. "It has benefited me more than just in repairing bikes, but is also like a secondary education."
The repair center was started in 2003 by two faculty members — Gus Gosselin, director of building services at MSU's Physical Plant, and Terry Link, manager of the Office of Campus Sustainability, Potter said.
"Basically, the idea was to take all the bikes that were impounded and fix them up, paint them green and loan them out," he said.
The service center settled into its home at Bessey Hall in September after Fred Poston, the vice president for finance and operations, and other administrators agreed to support a proposal to move the repair center to a larger location. It was previously located in Demonstration Hall.
Potter said he personally started to volunteer at the service center because it was a way to put his skills to good use by helping to promote bicycling.
"There is nothing else on campus that will service bikes," said Ben Hogan, a mechanic at the center and a zoology junior. "It's a campus of 40,000 people and a good 25 percent of the students have bikes."
