SETH MICHAEL MEYER
Assistant News Editor
The way the students of Fredonia commute around and off campus may be changing as Fredonia welcomes the idea of a bike-share program.
The project is being spearheaded by Enactus, a club on campus for students interested in business, and coordinated with the Sustainability Committee of Fredonia.
Sarah Laurie, the director of the Department of Environmental Health & Safety & Sustainability and the chair of the Sustainability Committee cites that this project has been attempted before but no group has come as far as Enactus has.
“The campus has looked at bike-sharing opportunities . . . in the past and there has been a lot of difficult hurdles,” Laurie said. “Enactus started looking into it on their own this year . . . they have done all the research and have done all the legwork.”
Since engaging in this project, Enactus has consulted with the Sustainability Committee to finalize a proposal to President Horvath.
Enactus’ proposal is to welcome the bike-share company, Spin, onto campus for the community to use.
“[Spin] essentially bring their bikes to campus
. . . and then they run the program,” said Laurie.
The idea is laissez-faire for the campus, meaning the company manages the program and the school only facilitates the “hubs” or “mini bike parking lots,” as Laurie described.
The process of using the bikes, according to Laurie, is simple: a student signs up with the Spin app, finds a bike around campus and takes it where they please, then the bike can be left anywhere. Yes — anywhere! At the end of the day, a team hired by Spin will collect the bikes around the community, locating them via GPS.
“Spin is a stationless bike-share program . . . the bikes are self-locking, they have onboard GPS, all of the technology is on the bike,” said Bert Dunn, sophomore business major and project lead in a subcommittee of Enactus.
When Dunn joined Enactus at the beginning of last semester, the idea for a bike-share program on campus had already existed but was not attempted until he decided to take the lead. Dunn explained a prior attempt by the university that failed when many bikes were dumped into Lake Erie. He urges that the no-cost, no-liability program that Spin offers puts this idea above and beyond any past attempts.
Spin has been making the news across the nation since its startup in July of 2017. According to the Washington Post, the niche start-up company collected $8 million from investors, and over a year and a half later Spin “has taken its bright orange bicycles to 10 U.S. markets, including Washington, Dallas and San Francisco.”
Spin has also made their way onto campuses across the country.
“Our partnerships team works with the administration and student government,” Spin touts on their website. “Unlike some competitors, we never dump bikes without permission.”
Some of the schools that are partnered with Spin include Duke University and the Rochester Institute of Technology. Here on our own campus, Enactus is trying to get the students’ opinion on the Spin program. A survey was sent out to the student body last week. Although incomplete, Dunn attested to mostly positive opinions, with about 350 responses so far.
Travelling at full-speed ahead, Laurie and Dunn predict that these bikes will be available for the community when students return to Fredonia in the fall.
