What is a bike library?

Typically, a bike library is a facility where bicycles can be barrowed, rented, purchased, repaired, and/or stored. It usually functions on a membership base for accountability, sustainability, and tracking purposes. Although membership fees and terms vary depending on the clientele base, funding sources, and operation methods, most bike libraries strive to make it as affordable and accessible as possible for the targeted audience.

Why a bike library?

In most urban settings, bicycles are ideal vehicles for short and medium length distance traveling. Bicycle use offers multiple benefits on individual, economic, social, and environmental levels. Establishing certain policies, infrastructure, and facilities encourage and make it easy for the public to ride bicycles. Bike libraries form a component of this diagram.

If established on an appropriate location and operated properly, this component can play a significant role in addressing a set of issues such as mass transportation need, motor vehicle traffic reduction, air and noise pollution reduction, gaining a healthier and active life style, facilitating interaction among residents, and between residents and their neighborhoods.

A bike library can fulfill such a function because: a) It offers bicycles at very affordable rates, at an accessible location, and with reasonable terms. b) It provides storage facilities in terms of parking and safe keeping. c) It offers repair help and inexpensive bicycle parts and tools? d) It creates a social environment where riders can interact and form networks.

How come it is affordable?

Bike libraries make bicycle use even more affordable than it is already. This is so for a series of interconnected reasons.

1. Bike libraries largely rely on volunteers and on the do-it-yourself principle.
2. People donate bicycles, parts, tools, and money.
3. They are subsidized. Subsidy can be received from a variety of sources. These could be federal government, state government, local government, local business, universities etc.
4. Once established and running, bicycles are inexpensive keep, maintain, and use.

What does an accessible location mean?

Firstly, remembering that bicycles are used for mainly short and medium length trips, a bicycle library’s location should be appropriate according to followings:

1. The location of majority of users.
2. The location of mass transit hub such as the train station, main bus or trolley terminal(s), ferry port etc.
3. The location of downtown area.

What are the reasonable terms?

Since bike libraries are essentially community oriented and cooperative in spirit, terms that most bike libraries operate on are fairly simple and easy to fulfill. The primary term would be, besides paying the applied fees, returning the loaned bicycle undamaged and clean and accepting the responsibility for your own safety.

Why parking and safe keeping are important?

Especially if the bike library is located near a mass transit hub or downtown area, parking and safe keeping of bicycles become important because many users ride bicycles to and from mass transit stations when people head to work, school, shopping etc. In such a scenario, bicycles are left at on the location for many hours and sometimes for days. Unfortunately bicycle theft happen frequently in most cities.

Bikestation, for example, is a non-profit organization that has set up bike stations in five cities in the West Coast: Berkley, Ambercadero, Palo Alto, Long Beach, and Seattle. Their key service is providing parking facilities for bicycle commuters. Currently, the Seattle and Long Beach branches charge a membership administration fee of $20, whereas it is free on other branches. In addition, a set of plan options are offered. Fees for these plans vary depending on the city branch. A year-long plan in Seattle, for example, is $96. Besides parking, these branches offer additional services such as repair, bike-share, ride-share, retail sales, and train boarding tags if the user wishes to get on the train with the bike. Moreover, few of the branches have café sections for resting, socializing, or waiting before getting on a train or bus. (1)

How does the repair help function work?

At most bike libraries you can have your own bicycle repaired at very reasonable prices. Most of the times it will be done free of charge – so, do make friends with them! You can also repair the bicycle yourself as usually tools are available for use by the program participants.

In most places, instead of a charge for any repair, parts, or tools used, you can choose to volunteer some hours at the library, offering your time and labor instead of cash. Often bicycle related workshops are given and they are good opportunities to polish your mechanical skills or socializing.

How does it offer inexpensive parts and tools?

Besides usually receiving some sort of subsidy, most bike libraries receive parts and tools as donations from the community. Otherwise, once a bicycle tool is bought with the collective budget, it can last for a long time and be used frequently making the initial cost relative and gradually decreasing. Moreover, since most bike libraries are not commercial entities, the profit margins from services, rentals, and sales are minimal. Thus, whereas a bicycle chain at a retail store might be $20, the same item at your local bike library may cost you half the price.

How does it create a social environment?

Firstly, you don’t have to be silent in this library!

In a sense, bike libraries function as gathering places for users. Since bicyclers compose a different breed of road users, there is a sense of camaraderie. It is more social and human scale experience of transportation. Although bicycles are single user vehicles, because of their human scale in terms of shape, size, and speed, they do convey an environment of interaction among riders or even pedestrians.

Moreover, bicycle culture is still way behind dominating car culture in most places. In order to promote bicycle use, bicycle friendly policies, traffic patterns, infrastructure, and facilities, it is important for bicycle users to create an effective network.

Bicycles are cost effective, pollution free, practical, and healthy vehicles. For popular use, however, they must be promoted and protected by legislative acts and served by necessary infrastructure and facilities.

One of the most important of aspect of legislation is to recognize bicycle as a viable transportation mean and create funding and legal venues for establishing amenities.

Bike-lanes, bike-ways, wider shoulders along roads and highways, traffic signs, passages, bridges, parking racks, bicycle stations, changing and refreshment locations etc. make up some of the necessary infrastructure and facilities to make bicycles a popular transportation mode.

In order to construct, implement, and maintain these amenities, the cooperation of local, state, and federal governments is needed. As noted in the New York City Bicycle Master plan, “Following significant investment in bicycle facilities, cities in industrialized countries have experienced dramatic increases in the level of cycling. For example, Copenhagen experienced a cycling increase of 50% in five years; Eugene, Oregon experienced an increase of 75%; and Toronto experienced an increase of 270%.” (3)

How does it reduce motor vehicle traffic?

According to the 1998 Nationwide Personal Transportation Survey (NPTS), done by the US Department of Transportation, 48% of all trips fall within 3 miles. (2) In other words, almost half of all trips can be categorized as short trips that theoretically traveled with a bicycle. Admittedly, some of these trips are impossible to make with a bicycle due to road, topographical, or weather conditions. Nevertheless, the number of trips that can be done with a bicycle is considerable.

If facilities such as bike libraries, bike stations, and other community bicycle programs are available and accessible for people, more individuals would use bicycles instead of their private cars to go to a train station, to do their errands, to go to their works or to a movie theater.

This switch from private motor vehicles to bicycles, subsequently, will result in less air and noise pollution since bicycles are non-motorized and make much less noise than cars.

How is it established?

As with most public endeavors, usually establishing a bike library start off through the efforts of several concerned and dedicated individuals. From there, a bike library can take a set of forms:

1. Informal and small neighborhood BL
2. Small neighborhood based non-profit organization based BL
3. Commercial / private BL
4. Formal city-wide BL
5. University campus BL

As mentioned above, any of these bike library versions emerge from the labor of a handful of individuals. Afterward, the size and service dimensions of a bike library are determined by:

1. The location (neighborhood, city, or a university campus) it aims to serve;
2. The number and skills of its founders and managers;
3. The types and amounts of funding and sponsorship they acquire; and
4. The methods of its operations.

Examples

There are quite a few successful bike library examples through the States, Canada, and Europe.

Arcata Bike Library in Arcata, California, for example, was founded in 2001. Its 2003-2004 annual report indicates that by 2004 they had checked out bicycles to their members 1,465. This number becomes more significant considering that with a deposit of $20, each user can check out a bike for up to 6 months. (4)

There are functioning bike libraries in many universities such as St. Lawrence University (Canton, NY), University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), University of Alberta (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada). There are also numerous city-wide community bike programs throughout North America and Europe. Portland, Minneapolis, Toronto, Oslo, and Vienna are only a few of such examples.

How is it managed?

Management of bike libraries depends on their sizes and service dimensions. Most of them, however, rely on several paid staff and a number of volunteers. Some of the essential tasks are:

1. Opening and closing the library
2. Bookkeeping
3. Maintaining bicycles
4. Bicycle loan tracking
5. Customer relations
6. Sponsor relations and grant writing
7. Promotion
8. Bicycle and parts donations
9. Volunteer scheduling