Student Government launches new Bike Share website

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Derrick Hunt

The Bike Share program, which was rolled out last spring, allows RIT students, staff and faculty to check out a bike from the Kate Gleason Hall office for up to 24 hours, free of charge.

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Student Government launched a redesigned website for its Bike Share service last week in preparation for future expansions of the program.

The Bike Share program, which was rolled out last spring, allows RIT students, staff and faculty to check out a bike from the Kate Gleason Hall office for up to 24 hours, free of charge. The program currently maintains 20 bikes but is on track to add more in response to high demand.

The popularity of Bike Share has made improving the service a top priority for Student Government. In addition to relaunching the website, Student Government is working to acquire more bikes and attempting to add another bike rack on the academic side of campus to make the service more accessible.

“We basically have full check out every single day — the system is maxed out,” said Ashley Carrington, president of Student Government. “I think doubling the amount of bikes seems reasonable, especially if we expand to the other side of campus. We already have proven statistics that this is something that people want.”

Carrington is hopeful that the expansion of the program will be completed during the spring semester at the latest, but noted that the process to implement another rack is challenging.

“Our main struggle with the Bike Share program is trying to keep it financially feasible while helping as many students as we can,” said Carrington.

For RIT students seeking alternative transportation options, the expansion can’t come quickly enough.

“I don’t know if the budget is low, but I wish they had more bikes,” said Brian Urena, a second-year civil engineering student. “Sometimes I want to check out a bike and they don’t have any.”

Availability issues aside, Urena added that he loved the high quality of the bikes and that the service helped him make it to class on time.

Next month, students like Urena will be able to request changes to Bike Share and other RIT services via a new petitioning website being created by Student Government, which will work similarly to the online petitioning service of the Obama administration.

Since the new Bike Share website was launched, more than 230 users have already registered for the service, according to Nathan Castle, director of services for Student Government.

“It’s exciting that we have such good usage,” said Castle, “but it’s unfortunate that not everyone can get bikes when they want them.”

Castle added that no bikes have been stolen or have needed to be replaced since the Bike Share service was started last April.

“There are definitely a lot of ways we can improve the program, and I look forward to improving it in the future. The new website was definitely the first step.”