Getting Some Local Help

Last week, Chris Suzdak and I met with Oxy's Director of Risk Management, Rebecca Dowling about the safety/insurance-related hurdles associated with establishing a bike-sharing program on campus. As Chris mentioned in his blog post, Dowling is no stranger to student efforts to get kids on bikes. In previous attempts, overambitious costs and skeletal proposals prevented a go-ahead from administration. Dowling emphasized that our proposal be thorough, containing a detailed description of the system and bike protocol. Before we begin writing, we need to confirm the library's cooperation (The library's drive to re-envision itself as an "academic commons" seems to be playing into our hand) and assess our bike "fleet" and maintenance strategy.

In regard to evaluating the structural integrity of our bikes and keeping them safe I think the Bike Oven is a valuable asset. The Bike Oven (http://bikeoven.com/) or (323 223 8020) is a bicycle repair Co-op located at 3706 N. Figueroa street. With a “do-it-yourself” mission, the Bike Oven allows bicyclists to come in and receive personal instruction from the staff in fixing their bikes for 5$ a day. The Bike Oven provides all the tools as well as information on organized group rides around Los Angeles. I emailed a volunteer at the “oven,” John Harvey. I was curious if they had experience working alongside up-and-coming bike-sharing programs and whether they could give us a leg-up deciding if our acquired bikes are worth fixing and, if so, helping us fix them. Harvey’s response was incredibly promising – proposing two possible options. The first is that we can bring in the bikes, receive training for their repair, and potentially pay for our time there using parts removed from bikes not worth fixing. The alternative would be to trade 8-12 of our neglected bikes and our group's available time to volunteer at the Bike Oven, for a few of the Bike Oven's already ready-to-ride bikes, giving us a 'quick start' on our bike sharing fleet. This option seems surprisingly generous and something we may want to take advantage.

Sometime soon, I think a few of us from the alternative transportation team should make an effort to visit the Bike Oven. It is also important that we find out how regular a responsibility repairing our bikes will be. If a dozen bikes require frequent maintenance, we may want to look into establishing a minimal hour paid position at the “Cage” – working title for our Range view bike corral. In any event, we’re making great strides. Once we inherit out bikes, we’ll have a firmer grip on our situation and can move on accordingly with the Bike Oven and begin to start putting pen to paper for our proposal.