As winter thaws into spring, University of Minnesota students have been taking advantage of the Gopher Bikes Program. They cite price accessibility as a driving reason. 

Dru Collins, a second-year at the University, has used this program for a year and a half. Collins formerly rented a bike from her residence hall multiple times a week, but transitioned to renting a bike for a semester at the start of her sophomore year. 

“[The best part is] the bikes are free, and everything that goes around with it is free,” Collins said. “If it needs to be fixed, stuff like that is free.”

First-year student Hudson Auger rents bikes from Sanford Hall. From there, the bike is his until midnight.

“Besides it being free, there’s almost always enough bikes,” Auger said. “I think it’s only been once or twice the whole year that they’re all rented out.”

Auger voiced surprise about helmets not automatically being included along with the bike rental. 

Kyle Hikes, another first-year living in Sanford Hall, expressed a similar anxiety. 

“It kind of sucks that they don’t have helmets available to rent, and I wish that they did,” Hikes said. 

Managers of this program emphasize student experience and participation. Transportation Programs Manager, John Mark Lucas said the issue with renting helmets lies with hygiene concerns. 

Working with the University’s Housing and Residential Life department to introduce a free bike system places a significant strain on their operations, and implementing a mandate on helmet cleaning and maintenance would add to that strain.

University Parking and Transportation Services manages the Gopher Bikes Program. Nick Mabee, a strategic communications and marketing manager, said PTS works closely with Boynton to offer a solution to the helmet problem.

“We have a program called helmets and headlights, where it’s buy one, get one 50% off. And so they stock different sizes of helmets. They stock bike water bottles, brake lights, headlights and bike locks,” Mabee said. “That stuff is all available in person at the Boynton pharmacy.” 

Regular maintenance to the bikes is an important aspect of the program’s success. In addition to monthly bike service and a full winter tune-up, PTS also offers a way for students and faculty to directly request maintenance at no cost to the user. 

Students rarely report mechanical issues with the bikes themselves. Hikes reported minor frustration in his experiences.

“Shifting the gears can be pretty clunky,” Hikes said. “You know, and they can be a little hard to maneuver. And then some of the brakes on the bikes are really not great.” 

The program itself is very new. When Nice Ride, a public bike-sharing company, permanently shut down in 2022, the University ended up receiving 280 bikes at no cost.

Despite a student bike-sharing program being a long-held University goal, this opportunity proved to be the impetus for the program. 

“We’ve always dreamed about having a bike fleet,” Lucas said. “We saw it as an opportunity to, you know, start a bike fleet.” 

Although the program has barely gotten past its initial kinks, Lucas sees more goals he would like to accomplish with this program.

Chief among them is for the program to eventually motivate students to own their own bikes. Lucas is in the process of developing a program in which students earn a bike by volunteering at the Bike Center and learning bike maintenance.

“If [students] feel like I cannot have enough money to buy my own bike for the second year, maybe I could earn a bike some other way,” Lucas said. “And so just reducing the barriers to ownership, we’re going to start an earn-a-bike program.” 

The defining principle of this program is that students won’t have to pay a dime. Collins is the embodiment of this vision. After using the Gopher Bikes Program for a year and a half, Collins eventually acquired her own bike, which she now uses to get around campus. 

Collins said if she had not been offered her own bike for free, she would still be using a bike from the Gopher Bikes Program, which she said she would have no problem doing. 

“Somebody was giving away their old one. I wouldn’t buy a bike to replace [the bike from the Gopher Bikes Program], but because it was free, I just got it,” Collins said.