For students waiting for a fun and environmentally-friendly way to get around campus, a fleet of 28 gold, spray-painted bikes might be the next big thing. The Environmental Conservation Organization will release a fleet of 20 Gold Bikes on Monday to add to the eight bikes they already have. The Gold Bike program, introduced to ECO members by Cameron Walker, started tentatively with the 2007 release of eight bikes to the University community. The Gold Bike program seeks to provide a pool of second-hand cycles for use by the University community. At first, the program was regulated and people who wished to participate were required to register. They were then given the combination to a bike lock to secure the bike on campus. Walker, who graduated from the University in 2007, explained the desire to keep the bikes from getting stolen. "Originally, we were trying to figure out how to keep the bikes around," he said. "We put a lot of time into [the program] even though we didn't put a lot of money into it. We ended up deciding we would do combination locks and all of them would have the same combination." The release of the 20 new bikes will change all of this. "The reason we're not doing locks is because locks cost more than these bikes cost," said Mic Gilles, Gold Bike coordinator and local bike mechanic. "We're not really expecting the bikes to last long in the rain and every semester we're going to be getting a new set of bikes." The new fleet of Gold Bikes will not require registration. The bikes are University-impounded cycles ECO received from the LSU Police Department. Volunteers meet every Saturday to repair and paint the bikes. "It's kind of a self-propelling project," Walker said. "People train people, people come out, some people come back and some people don't come back. People meet out at the house and fix bikes, talk about stuff, share some lunch and maybe go out after." Lauren Stuart, ECO president and economics senior, cited ECO's commitment for alternative transportation options as motivation for starting the Gold Bike program. "The idea is that people who don't ride bikes might have any number of personal reasons for why they haven't gotten a bike," she said. "But if they see other people riding bikes often they might be more open to the idea. If we convince people that it's fun to ride a bike they might realize that it's faster, it has health benefits and it's fun." Stuart, who lives in the Garden District, said she rides her bike to school as often as she can.
---- Contact Joy Leopold at jleopold@lsureveille.com
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