The Athens Bicycle Co-operative

Athens, Ohio has a non-profit organization of volunteers that fix and play with bikes. The intent being to create a community of people who can enjoy bikes to their fullest. To do this we need a very active and savvy bike community. We further this goal by fixing bikes, teaching volunteers about bikes, creating an environment where volunteers can teach themselves about bikes, planning bike related events, and creating ways of getting more bikes to more people.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Making plans with OU's Student Senate

So it looks like the Bike Co-op may in the future receive help from OU to run bike-sharing programs. After meeting with Student Senate, we learned that they are very eager to monitor our forthcoming AYBiTS program and use its example to prove the potential for bike-sharing in Athens to the OU administrators. Our success in launching the program would increase the amount of funding available to run AYBiTS and help it grow. It could also lead to the inception of a new program that follows the design of a bike library, in which students can loan out bikes for an extended period of time. There are lots of possibilities,
but at present we are concerned with finishing our initial fleet and planning the events surrounding its launch. We need a waiver form and user guide drawn up, detailed expenditure reports, advertising agreements, and so on. There will be a sign-up event, with all the taxis on the College Green and our instructional seminar given to groups of new users. Then comes the big kickoff, and after a few weeks we'll have an idea if our big project is a hit or a flop. Having our users e-mails, we can survey them and get an idea of how smoothly things are running.

Anyhow, Here's a picture:




Roger with a bike taxi dedicated to his friend Andrea in Ecuador