The Barn is bustling with activity. Mechanics tune up bicycles, making sure they’re ready to hit the road. All around them bikes are lined up; some look good as new, while others are missing wheels or a seat. One student gets tips on his bike. It’s a mountain bike, fashioned with bright yellow fenders, a matching sticker and rear basket with a sign hanging off it.
This is the EMU Outdoor Program Barn on the corner of University Street and 18th Avenue, and it has become the blossoming headquarters of the Outdoor Program’s pilot Bike Loan Program, something proudly advertised on the basket sign and stamped on the yellow stickered frames of each bike lined up inside the building.
The program launched two weeks before classes began, during the international student orientation, and 30 bikes have since been loaned to students through the program. Currently, the program’s mechanics are working on fixing up 50 more bicycles to meet the demands of a growing list of interested students.
“It’s a slow process,” noted Outdoor Program administrator Dan Geiger. “Each bike we put out takes a fair amount of staff time to get that bike out and ready to roll.”
Checking that tires are properly inflated and oiling the chains is one of the many projects that program volunteers and coordinators tackle on a daily basis to make sure the project is successful. “We’re kind of doing a bit of triage,” Geiger said, “going through those hundreds of DPS bikes and finding which ones are close to being put back into the field, which bikes need a fair amount of work, and which bikes are pretty much ready to be parted and scrapped out.”

Throughout the summer, the program worked with the Department of Public Safety, the University and a variety of sponsors to get this pilot program in motion. The idea seemed simple: Take abandoned bikes collected and stored by DPS, fix them up and get good bikes in the hands of students who need them. With the exception of a few logistical challenges, it has turned out better than they envisioned.”When we were first thinking about it in our minds, it was just going to be a ‘bike loan program,’ but it quickly developed in our minds as being a ‘bicycle center,’” Geiger said. “It turned out to be more than we thought, but in a positive way.”
Students looking for a bike can add themselves to a waiting list, and when a bike becomes available someone at the Outdoor Program will call them.
“The bike gets loaned out to the student for $65. The student then keeps it (the bike) for at least a term, if not the entire academic year,” student and Bike Loan Advocate Briana Orr said. “Then, when they return the bike, if everything’s in working order, all the accessories, the lock, the helmet, the lights, the basket, are still there and working, they get their entire deposit back. So essentially it’s free.”
Students are also welcome to participate in cycling-related classes through the Outdoor Program or work on their bikes in the Barn’s newly renovated workstation.
But the program faces some challenges. In order to continue with the program it needs to secure future funding. The program also faces aspace issue.
“I think we can fit 50 bikes (in the Barn) and then we’re maxed out,” Geiger said.
Nevertheless, the program is serving a basic transportation need for many students.
“I need to go to school every day, so I need to ride the bike,” said Baofeng Dong, a graduate student from China who rented a mountain bike for the academic year through the bike loan program. “Ten minutes I’m here, but if I wait for the bus, I’m not quite sure when it will come.”
Organizers each have differing opinions about why the campus needs this program, but in the end it all comes down to the same essential purpose.
“We need to create as many incentives for people to not drive their personal car,” Orr said. “I strongly believe it just creates a better sense of community when people are outside walking and biking around … As a University and as a place of education it’s really important to introduce students to new ways of living.”
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