BCycle reopens on campus after hiatus
Rentable bike share stations reopened across campus the week of Feb. 12 after a temporary suspension in December 2022. The stations were reopened through a partnership between Rice’s Campus Services and Sustainability division and Houston Bike Share.
Houston BCycle, run by the nonprofit Houston Bike Share, is reopening closed stations after Houston city officials approved $500,000 to keep the network operational. The station suspensions came from a decision to cut costs to keep the network running.
“The return of BCycle stations furthers the Office of Sustainability’s goals of providing convenient, sustainable transportation options that allow individuals to navigate and enjoy campus and Houston,” Kristianna Bowles, the sustainability program coordinator, said in a statement to Rice News.
The nonprofit was struggling to stay afloat, with revenue not keeping up with costs, according to James Llamas ’12, the vice-chair of the BCycle board and volunteer director on the board of Houston Bike Share. The program’s goal is to make bikes widely available for people to use for transportation, recreation and health.
Llamas said the monthly membership increased from $13 to $19 per month for students to help cover the costs of running the program. However, with the memberships subsidized through Rice, anyone with a Rice email can get $5 off. With this price, people can access the entire operating network of 75 stations, including eight on-campus stations, to make unlimited trips of up to 60 minutes.
“If you go over an hour it’s an extra 10 cents per minute until you return the bike, since it is a bike share and not a bike rental,” Llamas said. “The other change that was made last week was for walk-up users: If you have not signed up for a membership and want a bike to make a quick trip somewhere, it will cost you $1.25 to start and then 10 cents a minute.
Llamas said some students might not have the interest or skills to maintain their bikes, so bikeshares offer a way to take advantage of the accessibility.
“As a Rice alum, I’m envious of the transportation options that students have nowadays, both with the improved transit service and the new bus network that was implemented in 2015,” Llamas said. “A lot of students have bikes or scooters on campus because they’re very useful for getting to some of the farther reaches of campus or locations nearby if people are living or going places off campus. Also, it’s fun [that] people love the program because it gives them a way to get out to Houston in a new way. Rice has some beautiful neighborhoods, great parks and lots of places to explore.”
Hanszen College Eco-Rep Tiana Johnson said bikeshares are a great use of sustainable and environmentally friendly transportation, and she is planning on using the bikes to take a trip with some of her friends.
“I think people should resort to using bikes instead of cars, which emit a lot of CO2 gasses to travel shorter distances,” Johnson, a sophomore, said. “There are many options for people to travel, so they can go to Hermann Brown [Park] or just across campus and not have to worry about parking. I think the bikes will become a more valued option.”
Although he has his own bike, Adarsh Gadepalli, a McMurtry College sophomore, said having shared bikes available to students makes accessing anywhere on campus convenient.
“It’s a great idea. Many people do not have a bike so it makes going around campus harder,” Gadepalli said. “People miss class because they do not want to walk all the way across campus. Even if you have a car, it’s not really super convenient because you have to park in one of the parking lots and walk from the parking lot to wherever you want to go.”
Sam Byrd, an internal communications writer for the Office of Public Affairs, said in an email to the Thresher that Rice needed to find a way to provide bicycle access without the demands of ownership, and the solution they chose is a partnership with BCycle.
“Rice is committed to helping create a fiscally viable model for the Houston BCycle system.” Byrd wrote. “That’s what drove us to continue working with BCycle through the station closures. We wanted Rice to be the laboratory for testing solutions for economically sustainable bicycle sharing in Houston.”
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