The Green College “Bikes On Hand” BikeShare is set to promote bicycling as the paradigm for sustainable regional mobility and take collective ownership to UBC students and to the streets! Thanks to the AMS Sustainability Projects Fund, the residents of Green College will soon have access to a set of 4 re-furbished, single-speed bicycles for travelling further afield, moving in groups and ditching their cars in favour of community-shared transportation! Green College is a community of graduate students eager for interdisciplinary exchange and is an atypical student residence because many of its services are run by the students themselves.

For graduate students at Green College, it is a critical experimental period for realizing the possibility of bike-centric transportation in their burgeoning active professional lifestyle. In cities across the globe, bikes are replacing car ownership in conjunction with public transport and the growing movement of car sharing services (ZipCar and Modo), which, on UBC campus, are a mere ~5min bike ride from most locations. Our Bikes On Hand program will encourage a bike-centric lifestyle and ultimately support community events, local businesses, and increase the use of green space and ridership on and around bicycle routes.

The project aims to be fully functional by May 1 ^st so that students can take advantage of the improving weather and surprising spare time. The groundwork is being laid and the location of the bike station has been decided (see pictures!). The bikes station is in an ideal location where visitors must pass on their way to the numerous lectures hosted at the college. The bicycles have been commissioned from the Bike Kitchen and we’re ready to unveil, here and now, the decals that will be emblazoned on the stunning brown tanned bikes (see picture for decal, not bikes).

Yet, there are still considerable challenges ahead in the coming weeks. We will need to renovate the bike rack space in order to advertise the program and provide rain-cover for the bicycles. And, we will depend on our residents to help us devise some creative plans for cost effectively building a fashionable, enduring structure that also represents our sustainable ideals. One idea we have devised involves creating a structure from recycled materials (with attention to structural integrity rather than appearance), which would then be covered with geotextile and a cultivated layer of moss. We’ve also hatched a plan to include a small, low-end solar panel with a set of LEDs to ensure that the station is lit throughout the dark days of winter. As our project develops, our group is committed to developing a standardized protocol and blueprint for creating similar stations across campus and anywhere were people thrive on putting ideas into action. I hope you find our project exciting and continue to follow our progress on the AMS Sustainability Projects Fund Blog!