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Students have embraced the new on-campus Bike Share Program, according to Sustainability Committee member Dillon Doyle.

“It’s been an incredibly successful program,” Doyle said.

Doyle described the launch of the program as incredibly successful and noted that the T-shirts handed out were one of the most popular aspects of the launch.

“We may or may not re-issue shirts,” Doyle said.

Shirts may be given away, used as prizes to reward sustainable students, or sold, with the profits going to support the program.

The program, run by the Sustainability Committee and the desk assistants at Centennial Halls and Nelson Hall, is designed to target two groups of students. It targets those with a car who are looking for a more sustainable form of transportation for short trips and those students without a car or a bike who are looking for an alternative to walking.

Both groups of students have been using the program.

Daily use of the bikes varies, but Doyle described the overall pattern of usage: the program started off strong, then experienced a dip in usage and is now in resurgence.

Members of the Sustainability Committee monitor the condition of the bikes, inventorying them every week or two. If any bikes need repairs, committee members take them to Campus Cycles.

“They’re the nicest people,” Doyle said of Campus Cycles employees.

DU’s bike-sharing program is slated to become part of a citywide bike-sharing program with 600 bikes and 40-50 kiosks throughout the city.

The citywide program is to debut on April 22, 2010, according to Denver Bike Sharing, the non-profit corporation in charge of implementing and running the program.

In 2011, an additional 400 bikes and more kiosks will be added to the program.

Doyle expressed excitement about the citywide program.

“We’ll have a kiosk station [on campus], and the city of Denver will be running it,” Doyle said.

Students looking to rent a bike can currently check out one of the 20 bikes at the front desk of either Centennial Halls or Nelson Hall. Students provide their student ID and leave one form of identification.

This process allows the usage of the program to be tracked and provides a way to contact students who do not return the bikes by the required time of 7 p.m.

If students return bikes late, they are charged a small fee.  Failure to return a bike after three days results in being charged the cost of the bike. According to Doyle this is several hundred dollars. 

So far none of the bikes have been stolen.

As the weather turns snowy, bikes will be put in indoor storage for the safety of both the bikes and the students, according to Doyle.