Eight MSU bikes are now at Bailey Hall in Brody Neighborhood, and the ability to rent them began Monday morning as a part of ASMSU’s pilot bike share program.
The new trial period of the bike share program was originally set to launch before winter this year, but was postponed until now because of weather hindrances.
According to Kris Jolley in the Office of Campus Sustainability, the trial period for MSU’s bike share program will continue to the end of the year.
As of Tuesday afternoon, five bikes had been rented out by students after one day of the trial period starting, Bailey Hall service desk clerk Erika Yaremych said.
“I don’t have a bus pass, and I heard about this program and thought it would be really convenient,” criminal justice freshman and bike renter Hamani Thompson said.
The State News first reported on the bike share program in 2013, when ASMSU, MSU’s undergraduate student government, proposed allocating $60,000 for the implementation of such a program through a bike rental company called Zagster.
Since then, the program has faced criticism from MSU students who didn’t see the need to spend that kind of money on bikes, and has also faced serious challenges in being implemented on campus.
The program has undergone massive changes and hardly resembles the bike share program that was proposed by ASMSU more than a year ago.
As The State News reported in 2014, ASMSU enlisted the help of MSU Bikes Service Center and the Office of Campus Sustainability, and worked with Residence Education and Housing Services to create a completely different plan for the bike share program.
Students will be able to present an MSU ID to Bailey Hall’s front desk and receive a key to a bike for a 24-hour period. The Fuji brand mountain bikes provided by the MSU Bike Store do not have quick-release mechanisms for the wheels or seat, making it so those parts can’t be easily stolen, Sustainable Transportation Manager Tim Potter said.
Less than $5,000 has been allocated for this trial period.
“The pilot program will be a great way for us to gauge student interest in the program, and will help us decide whether or not to continue the program,” said Greg Jackson, ASMSU vice president for finance and operations.
As reported before by The State News in January, if the pilot period is deemed a success, then ASMSU and its partners will look into expanding the program with more money and better technologies.
