Many major cities across the country are adopting bike share programs to ease the amount of traffic congestion and some colleges are now following this trend by implementing programs of their own, but would a bike share program work for Pierce College?
One major challenge for a bike share program to happen at Pierce College is for the college to repeal its no bike riding on campus ordinance. The ordinance was put in place not only as a form of keeping the college from being liable in accidents that result in injury, but it was also put in place as a safety measure for the people that attend and work at Pierce. Some students have been seen riding their bikes on The Mall l in violation of this ordinance and these riders put others in danger by doing so as much of the traffic on The Mall is pedestrian in nature.
Among the safety concerns that come with a bike share program on campus is that the campus itself is not very bike friendly. There are no lanes anywhere on campus that would designate a special lane for bicyclists to safely ride in. As well as doing away with the no bike riding ordinance, Pierce would have to draw up bike lanes around campus so that students can safely ride their rented bikes.
It sounds easy but there may be a good amount of bureaucracy that comes with making that happen. Administration would have to create a special committee to oversee the project, evaluate the safety concerns and estimate the cost of the project. Even after these conditions are met, it still has to be approved and where is the money going to come from to fund it?
There are many universities that successfully provide a bike share program to its students and that’s because its programs are large in scale. According to a 2013 article from Forbes, Ohio State University launched a bike share program called CoGo with 30 bike share locations across its campus and the city of Columbus.
Pierce College is a community college, not a university, and our student body is comprised of people that not only live locally, but can live as far away as Los Angeles. A bike share program on a small scale that is only implemented for on campus and near vicinity use would be unfeasible and inefficient.
A small scale program would mean the cost of renting bikes would be more expensive than city based programs because the ridership is small and some Pierce students already struggle with other things like paying for tuition and food for the day.
A Pierce bike share program would be ideal for not only the students, but the community itself. Because the scale of such a program is so small, it sounds like more of a headache than an easy solution for getting across campus.