Approach 3 – Eric W

The goal of this Project is to rework the “Blue Bike program” that is in place on campus. I wanted to change the way students had access to bikes on campus and change how the students can currently use them. This would help the students that would have to get across campus faster and also have the potential to have less cars on campus driving around. The goal of this project is to get more people off the road and more people on bikes not only on campus but in the community

Right now there is a program on campus that is called “ Blue Bikes Program” where they fix up old bikes left on campus and allow students to rent these bikes free of charge after filling out an application. One thing I see wrong with this application is that you have to fill out an application in order to get a bike and not every student would fill one out and actually pick one up from the Maine Bound Adventure Center.  I think this is a really clever program that gives students access to bikes that would have gone to waste anyway.

One thing I want to implement is that the university would invest in a couple of racks bikes that would be stationed around campus. This would be something that would be very similar to the Citi bikes in NYC and other cities like Boston and Philadelphia. The student would be able to check out these bikes right from the docking station with the swipe of their mainecard. This would allow the school to have a record on who had this bike last and all the student has to do when they are done with the bike is dock it at another docking station. Without your mainecard, the bikes would be locked in place and at no risk of being stolen. I would still keep the free of charge to UMaine students. How this changes the old program is that it brings the bikes to the students instead of the students coming to the bikes. You want to make the life of the student as easy as possible and no extra things they have to do. With my program, all you have to do is swipe your mainecard and your good with a bike either for a joy ride or if you’re late to class a fast track across campus. Ideally, this would encourage students to bike or walk rather than drive across campus which in turn causes more traffic for the commuter students.

The budget on this would be very high for the university at first but I feel this charge could be added to our student activty fees which we pay anyway. Another thing we could do to make money on this is if a person was on campus without a Mainecard they could implement a day pass or something that they would pay at a kiosk and the school could gain some of that investment back. I would have to work with campus in order to organize the money and how many and the locations of the stations. To start you would need a minimum of three stations to cover most of campus and this way it would allow student places to dock the bike where ever they are on campus.

Timeline-

Phase 1:

Distribute 3 stations throughout campus where it would allow people to get across campus and be able to dock your bike in a spot halfway there.

Phase 2:

This phase would take into account how many people are using the system. With this information they take into account how many more bikes they will need to get allow the students to get access to a bike without having to wait. Also, implement a department to maintain the bikes that will also transport bikes around campus if needed.

Phase 3:

Develop an app where the user can see where on campus there is bike available or a spot for the bike they have are available.