To those students who wish they didn’t have to walk, bus or drive everywhere on the campus, a solution may be in sight.
A bicycle-sharing program called weBike is being piloted at the university this semester. The program would enable students to rent bicycles for periods of time during the day. Alumni who developed the new rental service hope the Department of Transportation Services will adopt it, which they say will further the university’s goal to becoming more “bike-friendly.”
Brad Eisenberg, weBike’s chief development officer and 2009 alumnus, said the program is still in its initial stages. They will be seeking student responses to chart their next steps.
“We’re still testing out technology,” Eisenberg said. “We’re hoping to gain a presence on campus and get feedback from the student population before we continue.”
Each of the 12 bikes in the pilot program — donated by the Renaissance Bike Shop in the Engaged University — has an identification number. When students need to use a bike, they will text the ID code to a phone number given to them upon registration on the website, and within 20 seconds, a combination will be sent back to them to unlock the U-lock on the bike.
If the developers — all university alumni — reach their goal of expanding to have a 1,000-bike fleet, a different system may be put into place using ID cards and special bike racks.
The idea was initially devised two years ago in a business class, and its developers decided to take their concept beyond the classroom.
The pilot program is funded by a small grant that weBike won in a green initiatives competition at Maryland Day in the spring. weBike beat out four other green projects to win the $2,000 stipend from the Maryland Fund for Excellence.
Gerald Suarez, associate dean of external strategy in the business school, taught the class, called Systems Thinking of Managerial Decision Making.
“Clearly, from the beginning, not only was the concept appealing, but I knew they would succeed because they were so passionate,” Suarez said. “They had a resiliency, and they were ready to go the distance. I’m very proud of them.”
The preliminary trial is free for invited students; only members of the Student Government Association and the multi-disciplinary academic program QUEST, which partners business and engineering students, have been asked to participate. The full-fledged program would rely on a semesterly registration fee of about $20 per student.
“Our overall goal is to promote a sustainable transportation infrastructure on college campuses nationwide,” Eisenberg said. “Bike sharing is a model that relieves students from bike ownership, which deters a lot of students from biking at school.”
Now that a prototype has been developed, the former students hope DOTS will foot the bill and help run the bike-sharing program on the campus. Last year, they were told DOTS couldn’t afford to fund the program.
David Allen, the director of DOTS, declined to comment on the issue, as he had not been updated on the situation.
Suarez, however, seemed confident the program would be a success on the campus.
“It always takes longer than what you expect it to,” Suarez said. “But with a little support from the leadership on campus, I see no reason why it won’t take off as a university program. The support of the administration won’t guarantee success, but the lack of it will accelerate failure.”
openchowski@umdbk.com
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