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LEASE A BIKE
Need a bike to get around campus?
Click here for lease information and application ...
VOLUNTEER
Would you
like
to volunteer to
help repair, paint, or maintain bikes? Volunteers learn a wide variety of bike maintenance skills and earn access to work on their own bikes. Click here for details.
DONATE A BIKE
We welcome donations of sturdy bikes that are in
good working condition. If you have a bike that you'd like to donate, please
click here for more information. To drop off donated bikes (contact us first
please) here's location information to the MSU Bikes Service Center.
Share-A-Bike, a volunteer-operated community bike program, operating out of red trailers behind the East Lansing Fire Station No. 1, 1700 Abbott Road. SAB was started in 1994 and has given away thousands of bikes to needy folks over the years. During the warm months of the year they are open for "business" every Saturday morning from 9 til 11 a.m. During the winter they're open every 2nd Saturday of the month, same time. Here's an article with some more info. about the program. Email Ron Sprinkel, founder and treasurer for more information, or call him @ 517/351-4848 or June Grabemeyer at: 517/372-6895. (see web site for more info)
The bike program at University Lutheran Church (map) has been providing refurbished bikes to incoming international students and other needy community residents for many years. A quick description from the program coordinator:
"Our program is primarily for incoming International students who are without a car and need a bike for transportation, though we have helped others who have needed a bike to secure or retain employment.We maintain a waiting list and make bikes available as we 1) obtain used bikes and 2) can get them repaired and ready for distribution."
Contact information:
Fred Fritz
University Lutheran Church
517/ 332-2559 | ulc@msu.edu
The Lansing Walking & Bicycling Task Force has created a set of community engagement tools to mobilize residents, businesses, and other stakeholders to advocate for walk and bike friendly communities. Visit www.walkbikelansing.com to see how the project is being piloted in Lansing. The goal is to elevate awareness and advocacy for walkability and bikeability improvements. Tools include draft letters and resolutions of support, fact sheets, dialogue tools, action alerts, and a draft Walk and Bike Lansing! plan, which offers 76 recommendations for making Lansing a walk and bike friendly city. Get involved by scheduling a community discussion, subscribing for Action Alerts!, providing a letter or resolution of support, or giving feedback on the Walk and Bike Lansing! plan.
Tim is also involved in the local community advocating for better bicycling facilities and advocacy in general whenever possible. Over the winter of 2006-2007 Tim Potter participated in numerous planning meetings for the City of Lansing's Mayoral Task Force on Walking & Bicycling which was formed by Mayor Virg Bernero on October 20, 2006 to improve the facilities in the City of Lansing for bicyclists and pedestrians. Tim is serving on their educational and promotional sub-committee. Here are some links to more information:
- 1st Report – December 1, 2006
- 2nd Report – December 19, 2006
BikeLansing is an email list serve that is a forum for general bike commuting & advocacy questions (best routes, clothing, ride partners...) for the Greater Lansing Area. A number of local bicycle commuting experts are on board and ready to help mentor new commuters and answer questions. To join email jlindenmayer@LMB.org and write SUBSRIBE in the subject line and make sure to include your name in the body of the email.
An excellent online resource for everything healthy in the Greater Lansing area to include bicycling. Check it out and subscribe to their weekly update to stay informed here!
On Dec. 9, 2004, the Bike Project hosted 3 temporarily homeless teens (along w/ one counselor) for about 1.5 hrs from the Gateway Community organization. There were 2 boys, 1 girl all about 15-18.
Anyway, they were a little stand-offish at first but by the end we had them truing a wheel and actually enjoying the challenge! We covered general lubrication, chain lubes, gearing issues/ adjustments, brakes (balancing, spring tensioning, replaced some pads, tightened up slop in the anchor and cable adjustments), replaced a tube and tightened up a headset, all on one bike! These kids made comments like "wow, didn't know there was so much to fixing bikes!", "oh, maybe that's why bike does that!", "That's not quite good enough..." when truing the wheel. And none of the kids had worked on bikes at all prior to the session!
It was all-in-all a very fun time, at least for me, and we look forward
to doing it again after the new year. We'd like to schedule at least 1
session per month on an off night, but if anyone else in the Project would
like to host one of these sessions we could maybe offer more to these kids.
We told them that what we had in mind was that if they wanted to volunteer
their time to help fixing up some bikes for a while they could earn themselves
a bike; they seemed pretty excited about that possibility; we'll have to
discuss how many hours, etc. we'd like them to work before they could earn
a bike. Perhaps they could earn a bike that they would have to fix up themselves
from our stock of bikes that are probably going back to surplus? Not
sure, but I do think this is a very good community service that we can offer
in some limited fashion as a way to help the local community outside of
MSU which might make our BP/ CC more attractive to our sponsors.