Duke Bike Program Launched
On first day, 95 out of 130 bikes leased
Friday, August 31, 2007
print
|
email
|
digg
|
del.icio.us
Durham, NC -- That's Provost Peter Lange riding Thursday to launch the new Duke Bikes program, a pilot effort to provide students with 5-day loans of one- and three-speed bicycles to move around campus.
At the opening ceremony Thursday, Lange said the project had three goals: improving the health of Duke students; assisting the environment and building community. Along with last week's announcement of expanded services and hours at two major dining locations on campus, these programs promise to be the first in a series of campus culture initiatives this year, Lange said.
Photo by Leanora Minai. More story below photo. Click the photo to watch a video of the Duke Bikes kick off (RealPlayer).
"It's about building community and creating more ways to get people to come together around shared interests," Lange said. "A culture of 'grab and go' dining can be very isolated. We want to encourage more sit-down dining for a more communal experience. Similarly, we can build a community around shared interests in bikes.
"We're trying to strive for a more pluralistic culture here in which there are lots of different ways of being at Duke, and people interact with each other around a lot of different interests," Lange said. "The theme of community and pluralism will be very much at the heart of what we are doing on campus culture this year."
Students initially reacted with enthusiasm to the bike program. Within of an hour of Thursday's opening, 95 out of 130 bikes were leased.
Chris Oshii, a graduate student member of Duke Bike Advocates, said many students and student groups had been involved in promoting the project. Duke is a large campus, he said, and students would get behind a program that made moving around it more convenient and healthy.
"This has been a great effort," Oshii said at the launch, "involving a number of student groups. Please take part of it, give it a try and let us know what you think."
