By Nick Terhall, GSB director of student affairs and bike share project lead
There has been quite a bit of discussion surrounding the bike share program lately, so, as the overall lead on the project, I would like to give students an update on where the program currently stands, the plan for moving forward and why I strongly feel that this program stands to potentially be a huge benefit to Iowa State.
Since the industrial design studio in spring 2014 completed work on three conceptual bike designs, quite a bit of work has been done to advance the program. Over the summer, I formed the Bike Share Committee, half of whom are students with the other half being faculty and staff.
This committee has representation from Recreation Services; Facilities, Planning and Management; Office of Sustainability; Government of the Student Body, the industrial design program and several students groups, such as the ISU Cycling Club.
This committee is responsible for overseeing the project and making decisions regarding how the program moves forward as well as providing a longterm knowledge base about the program.
This semester, more than 40 students from industrial design, software engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, computer science and community and regional planning are directly involved in working on the project.
Outcomes from this semester’s work will be two fully-functioning rideable prototype bicycles, a working docking station prototype, development of software and a phone app and an implementation plan.
But most importantly, the community and regional planning class will deliver a study on overall transportation on campus, including CyRide, vehicle traffic, pedestrians and bicycle, along with proposed changes and a feasibility study on how a bike share program might fit into all of that. This is something that the university is very interested in as well.
There was a meeting of major parties involved in the bike share program Sept. 17, which included Tom Hill, senior vice president for student affairs, GSB President Hillary Kletscher, GSB Speaker of the Senate Gabe Walsh, the industrial design department and myself.