On-campus bike rentals begin in February

Greg Thomson newwave@tulane.edu
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After years of planning, the Juggling Club is putting the idea of a bike-sharing program into action. With the help of Housing and Residence Life and Undergraduate Student Government, the organization will introduce the Green Bike Program in late February.

Bikes on the uptown campus

Bicycles that are unclaimed at the end of the semester will be offered to students for rental through the new Green Bike Program.


Bikes will be available toward the end of February as part of a pilot program. Evan Reuter, president of the Juggling Club, hopes that there will be a solid system in place by the beginning of next semester once logistics are managed and the kinks are ironed out.

“Ideally, you can go to the desk of your residence hall and give them your Splash Card,” says Reuter. “Then, they will tell you to take bike No. 5, and you go outside to unlock it, and then it's your bike for the day.”

At the end of each semester when students leave campus, the Tulane Police Department confiscates all of the bikes that are left behind. The Green Bike Program will reuse those unclaimed bikes by offering them to students for rental.

Students will have the option of renting a bike for the entire semester or one day at a time. While daily bike rentals will be free, semester-long rentals will cost a small fee that will be determined once the pilot program begins and maintenance costs are gauged.

“I think that bikes are the future,” says Reuter. “They're smaller than cars and they don't use gas so with all of the overpopulation we have now, bikes are the future of being able to get from point A to point B as fast as possible and as efficiently as possible.”

More information about the program can be obtained by emailing Evan Reuter.

Greg Thomson is a junior at Tulane University majoring in communication.