Anchorage Daily News: Bike club peddles idea to ease parking woes - 24 September, 2006

A handful of University of Alaska Anchorage students have an answer to global warming, epidemic obesity, high gas prices and chronically congested campus parking. It started with a used mountain bike, spray painted green and gold and christened “Cyndi” with a Sharpie marker.Cyndi is the flagship of the UAA Bike Club’s Golden Bicycle Program, the first of a planned “bike library” that will allow students to pay a small deposit and use the bicycles to commute to, from and around campus.

“It’s a mess right now with cars and pedestrian traffic,” said Andrew Manos, club co-founder. “We want to get people out on bikes that don’t have bikes.”

Because of the construction of a science building, the university recently closed a 180-space parking lot, adding extra stress to an already pinched parking supply. The ratio of students and employees to parking spots on campus is 4-to-1. Riding bikes keeps cars off campus, off the streets and gives busy students exercise, Manos said.

The Bike Club, started last spring, has about 25 members, most using bikes as a primary form of transportation. “We all have cars,” said Lindsay Johnson, co-founder of the club. “But mine usually serves as my bike locker.”

Manos’ bike, the club mascot, is a circus-worthy 6-foot-tall, green and gold number made from welding two vintage cruisers together — one on top of the other. It’s a little tricky to mount — he stands on top of a picnic table — and falling off can be painful. But it looks cool.

“Unfortunate accidents do happen,” Manos said, balancing on the contraption. “That’s why we got the ladies’ frame option.”

The bike program has morphed from earlier versions. At first the plan was to have communal campus bikes that students could ride to class and leave outside buildings where other students could pick them up and ride them to another class. The club decided that idea wouldn’t work in the long run because the bikes would disappear, Manos said.

“It won’t work probably for the same reason communism didn’t work,” Manos said. “People aren’t inherently good. ”

The club has so far collected 10 donated bikes. Already in circulation are Cyndi, named for Cyndi Spear, associate vice chancellor for administrative services, and a bike named “Bruce,” for Bruce Schultz, dean of students.

The rest of the bikes are in various states of disrepair in the unofficial Bike Club shop, headquartered in Manos’ College Village garage.

“We didn’t get the most high-quality bikes, put it that way,” said Brandon Reiley, a club member. “We needed to do a lot of swapping parts.”

The loaner bikes have generated lots of interest, and there’s more demand than supply, Reiley said.

Ideally, the club would like to provide free basic maintenance on campus. The club also wants more bike racks, especially those protected from the weather.

Around a hundred students ride their bikes to UAA every day, and many faculty members ride as well, according to a recent club count. That number is about 60 percent less over the winter, they said.

Bike racks were overflowing Friday despite steady rain.

“With more available bike parking we think the numbers would go up,” said Reiley.

The club, which is functioning on a meager $300 budget, needs more used bikes for the program, and hopes the university will give it some space for a small bike shop, Manos said.

“The Bike Club is encouraging the use of alternative means of transportation, which we love,” said Bill Spindle, director of the business services department, which manages parking, in an e-mail.

So far that sentiment hasn’t turned into concrete support, but Manos thinks it will. Supporting bike commuters is a cheap solution for campus parking woes.

“It’s so easy to ride to school,” Manos said. “If it was a more viable option, I don’t see why more people wouldn’t.”