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Audio Slideshow: Bicycle Building Blocks

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Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

Photo by John Wagner

Nick Toye flipped through five brand new bike tires he had salvaged a day prior from a garbage transfer site.

A student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Toye was taking a break from tinkering with the stripped-down bicycle behind him. As part of a club that meets weekly to fix up rescued bikes, he has access to rows of used frames the group has collected — about 80 during the past year and a half — in hopes of prepping them for the road.

There were brands recognizable and obscure: a slim Fuji roadster, a Specialized Street Stomper. On a given work day, club members might clean and grease chains or change brake lines — the work is dictated largely by the available parts and supplies.

Toye and another club organizer, Eli Sonafrank, said it’s a good use of old bikes and parts that would have otherwise gone to the landfill. And if it gives them a chance to show other students a few of the tricks of bike maintenance, all the better.

If they’re really lucky, they said, the work could someday lead to an on-campus bicycle-sharing program, although maybe not until after they graduate.

Toye said when he lived off Sheep Creek Road last year, it took him 15 minutes to bike to class — often less than it took to drive, find a parking space and walk to the classroom.

“You can get up from Westridge and lower campus in like five minutes,” he said of biking on campus. “It’s really the way to go.”

Toye and Sonafrank originally collected the bikes with the goal of starting a cooperative sharing program.

In the fall of 2006, they held a drop-off day at a nearby research center. People donated dozens of bikes. The club has since refurbished about a dozen and identified them with blue and gold paint — school colors.

Many universities and cities feature structured sharing programs that range from “free-bike” projects, where public bicycles are left unlocked, to loan programs similar to checkout systems at libraries.

After meeting with campus officials, Toye said he realized a sharing program for Fairbanks could still be years away. There were questions of whether a loan program would need to include helmets and who would provide them. There was the issue of who would manage a loan program and keep track of deposits or whether deposits would even be needed. And there was the potential liability involved if someone crashed while riding a renovated, loaned bike.

Annette Chism, a risk manager at the university, said she suggested the club review other schools’ sharing programs — where, often, clubs run cooperatives while working closely with school administrators — as potential models.

“The community bike program is a commendable goal for the right time and place,” she said. “And the university has encouraged this club to talk with other universities that are running bicycle programs and utilize best practices from other universities to develop a solid plan for the group to present.”

An eye on sharing

A number of U.S. schools mimic larger programs seen in European and American cities with their own campus-wide bike-sharing projects. The University of New Hampshire, for example, runs a hybrid program that sells bikes to school departments and lets students, faculty and staff sign out bikes and locks for a matter of days. The loan program is free, with borrowers paying for repairs that occur when the bike is checked out in their names, according to the school’s Web site.

The UAF bike club, which Sonafrank said has about two dozen members, is linked with the school’s Sustainable Campus Task Force. Rich Seifert, faculty adviser to the task force, said visiting students from California started the larger group six years ago.

Seifert said the students’ vision is encouraging.

“They’re looking at the future and they know that if we don’t get (sustainability) right, they won’t get a future,” he said. “I’ve found this group ... works toward sustainability and keeps the effort going on a campus that needed it done. Badly.”

Sonafrank said he already knew a little about maintaining his bike before the club started meeting. A bike-maintenance class he took last summer helped, and now he and Toye offer tips to other club members while working in the shop on weekends.

The pair said their rebuild project is aimed at promoting bicycling as a healthy — and, with rising fuel prices, cheaper — alternative to driving. It’s also about somehow making it easier for students and staff to access working bicycles, so Toye said the group can keep working ahead of the curve until the right sharing plan presents itself.

“The timing is right to get this stuff going,” Toye said. “It’s just going to take a proposal and billing it as a solution.”