Down economy may claim Blue Bikes
“We’ll have to finish out this grant cycle: we’ll go through the summer, we’ll go through the fall. Things will start trickling in the fall and then in the spring it’s the obvious time to bail on the program,” he said.
Located between the Military Science building and the Fieldhouse, Aggie Blue Bikes currently operates without the support of any student fees and runs solely on donors, Christensen said. Eighty-five percent of the funding comes from AmeriCorps and the other 15 percent is provided by other donors, he said.
With the money from the student fee, Christensen said Aggie Blue Bikes will hire a full-time program coordinator that will cost $42,000 per year, with $29,000 going toward an annual salary and $13,000 for benefits. He said the role of the coordinator will be to pursue funds from donors. If there is a surplus, Christensen said he will try to create an involvement scholarship; however, if scholarship rules prevent him from doing so he will use the money to expand and better the quality of Aggie Blue Bikes.
“We want to let people know the desperate nature of our situation here, and what we want to let them know is that we’re not desperate due to mismanagement,” he said. “We’ve looked at every way possible to reduce the cost to the students. We’re not in a desperate situation because we’ve been frivolous with our money.”
One thing Christensen said he wants to make clear is that the $1.25 fee is separate from the $65 fee increase the athletics department is asking for.
“We’re asking for a Coke, they’re asking for a bike,” he said. “If you take a $1.25 (fee), add it up over a person’s entire education, (he or she) is spending a total of $10 to $16, max.”
Students can come into the bike shop with their bicycle and receive free one-on-one tutorials on how to tune it, Christensen said. The shop has a student tool board, which he explained is a board with all the tools necessary to tune or rebuild a bicycle, and it’s free to use.
“There’s really nothing you couldn’t do with your bike in here,” Christensen said. “Unless we didn’t have the tool, but if we don’t have the tool, tell us and we’ll purchase the tool. We kind of feel like that’s our obligation to students: to make sure that they’ll have every tool they’ll need to do everything on their bike.”
Aggie Blue Bikes will also checkout bicycles for a day or a semester long.
Aside from the one-on-one tutorials, students can attend the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) and Community Weeklies classes, Christensen said. Both classes are free and have a professional from the community teach a variety of topics from air quality to overhauling a bicycle, he said. While Community Weeklies is a weekly class, LAB is on-demand and only occurs when sufficient people have signed up, he said.
Aggie Blue Bikes hosts an annual festival called the Cache Valley Bike Festival which takes place in mid-May, Christensen said. This year the festival will take place May 16 at Merlin Olsen Park. There will be music, competitions, food and more; however, the main emphasis of the festival is to education people about bicycles, Christensen said.
“We’re hoping that it becomes kind of a Woodstock of all bike events,” he said.
There will be a pedal-powered PA system at this year’s festival which is a stationary bike that, when pedaled, generates electricity to power electrical appliances, such as guitar amps, Christensen said.
Since Aggie Blue Bikes’ inception on Sept. 2, 2005, the shop has seen a gradual incline of student visits, Christensen said. The steepest increase was from fall 2007, with fewer than 88 visitors, to fall 2008, which drew 599 visitors, he said. This increase was due to the advertising of the student tool board, he said.