Spring Break
Free Ride
Students use donated bikes for community program
By: Chris Hokanson
Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: News
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He could be riding a cruiser or a mountain bike, maybe he's riding his tandem bicycle with his girlfriend, Meghan Knobel. Naveira, who's working toward his doctorate in physics, said the bike he chooses to ride depends on the mood he's in.
"I was walking to class the other day and Lucas rode by me on one of his cruiser bikes, leaning back and taking it easy," said Mitch Drennan, a senior biology major and friend of Naveira's. "I thought to myself, 'He must be having a relaxing day.'"
Naveira has a love for bicycles - riding them, maintaining them and building them - and it's led to his forming a group on campus focused on bicycling on campus, the Maroon Bike Project. He spends one or two weekends each month at the Yellow Bike Project in Austin, tinkering with his bikes and helping other people work on theirs. He says it's just a hobby, but earlier in the semester, his passion for bicycling evolved into a project to bring something like Yellow Bike to Texas A&M.
Together with Drennan and several other friends, Naveira started the Maroon Bike Project. The goal of this project, he said, is three-fold: to provide bicycle education, bike safety and awareness and a 'build-a-bike' workshop on campus. While most of their work is still ahead of them, the organizers of the project are optimistic to see the program implement this fall.
The group's main objective is simple: to increase bicycle riding on campus. "I always say that walking is sort of inefficient," Naveira said. "It's nice to go for a walk, but everyone has a schedule and they need to get from one side of campus to the other very quickly. Our bus system is incredible, but when the weather permits, it's so much nicer to ride your bike from one building to another than it is to get on the bus, wait, stand in the bus, and so on."
The first part of the program, said Annie Behrman, a senior anthropology major, is the most important. While the number of bicycles and bicycle riders on campus has dramatically increased, the knowledge of how bikes work and how to maintain them has not, she said.
"I saw a guy riding his bike on campus the other day and his entire back wheel fell off, totally screwing up his frame and making him fall," Behrman said. "People are usually completely unaware of the problems with their bike and we want to change that."
To that end, a bike workshop would be established on campus, where bikers could come and work on their bikes and learn how to properly maintain them. But instead of the cyclist just handing over his or her bike to a volunteer to work on, they would take an active role in fixing and maintaining the bike. That concept is what has driven the success of the Yellow Bike Project, now in its tenth year.
"Because of that, bicycles around campus will be better maintained and fewer will be abandoned, Naviera said.
"You take so much more pride in a bike when you put your own hands into it," Behrman said. "Whenever I drop my bike on the ground, I cringe. It's like my baby. When I had a Schwinn that I got at a bike shop, I didn't really care about it because I didn't put any work into it. Once you put a lot of time and money into something, you value it a lot more."
The second goal of the Maroon Bike Project is bike safety and awareness. Naveira said too many, if not most, bicycle riders on campus have no idea about the rules that apply to them on the road. Tickets are expensive, he said, and he wants people to avoid those tickets and ride safely.
"I actually got ticketed riding in the wrong side of the bike lane," he said. "I thought that if you were in a bike lane, you were good to go, exempt from the other rules. But no, it's just like riding a car in the wrong lane. It was about $170 for the ticket."
The main goal is to obtain a space on campus where people can come and work on their bicycles, learn about maintenance and safety or build a bicycle. A pool of parts and frames, possibly coming from the large amount of abandoned bikes picked up by Transportation Services each year, would allow people who can't afford a new bike or just enjoy working on bikes to build one, Naveira said. The service would be completely free, he said. They will only ask for donations if someone uses a part or a frame.
The group has been in talks with members of the administration, trying to procure funding and a location to house their workshop. John Crompton, a distinguished professor of recreation, parks and tourism sciences, has offered his help to the project. The College Station city councilman has been involved in previous bicycle efforts and he likes where the Maroon Bike Project is headed.
"Anybody who's been here awhile recognizes that the congestion in this city has gotten worse and worse," Crompton said. "The reality is that it won't get any better no matter how much money we throw at it because as the city continues to grow, we continue to get behind the eight-ball on it. Clearly, for 50,000 young people, bicycles have to be a central part of the solution."
Crompton said there are discretionary accounts within the University he's willing to offer to the program, but that a strong business plan has to be formed in order to get the project off the ground.
"Lucas has brought to the table a terrific idea," he said. "But in this point, it's still in the conceptual level. He's thought through what would be involved, but the nitty-gritty still needs to be flushed out. That's what the next stage of this project has to be."
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