Several Ohio colleges put abandoned bikes to good use
John Shrader can picture the too-full family SUV at the end of spring semester that couldn’t possibly fit a bicycle.
He can comprehend how a bicycle’s flat tire could be neglected in the hustle and bustle of a student’s school year. And he knows that sometimes students are already in a neighboring state on their drive home before they realize they’ve forgotten their two-wheeled companion.
It’s these scenarios and more that Shrader thinks about while he sends sparks flying with the angle grinder he uses to cut off locks and impounds the bikes. Over the last year, Ohio State has collected about 525 deserted bikes.
“I have a lot of time to think about why you would leave a bike behind,” said Shrader, field logistics coordinator for Ohio State’s Traffic and Transportation Management department. “You know, 400 or 500 saw cuts a year, you think about things like that.”
Any number of circumstances might have led to an abandoned bike’s lonely state. But programs at Ohio State and other local colleges aim to get their wheels rolling again.
Within the past two years, Ohio State began donating unclaimed, impounded bikes to Third Hand Bicycle Co-Op, a volunteer-run, nonprofit bike shop and repair center at 979 E. 5th Ave.
Third Hand promotes bicycling as a safe and sustainable means of transportation, focusing on education and hands-on experience, said Heather Pirrone, a co-op coordinator. They take in donated bikes, rehab them and sell them at low costs, she said.
“We’re very, very grateful that they are willing to donate those bikes to us,” Pirrone said of Ohio State. “And we hope that that partnership continues.”
Pirrone said the sales of rehabbed bikes keep the doors open at Third Hand, which also offers workshop space, tools and bike repair training to the public.
Third Hand volunteers feel their mission is especially important in the Milo-Grogan neighborhood just north of Downtown, where their shop has been located since 2012.
“Especially because of the neighborhood that we’re in, a lot of folks are challenged in the transportation area,” Pirrone said. “Having a bicycle so that they can get to work is really important to them, and having it at a low cost is very helpful.”
“We just, in general, like their mission,” Shrader said, adding that a number of Ohio State students volunteer for Third Hand. “They have a lot of educational things where they bring in people from the Milo-Grogan area.”
Other central Ohio colleges also try to put abandoned bikes to good use. Ohio Wesleyan University is donating about 20 to 25 abandoned bikes this year to the Second Ward Community Initiative in Delaware, university spokesman Cole Hatcher said. That group plans to work with a local Boy Scout troop to fix up the bikes and distribute them in the community, Hatcher said.
At Otterbein University, campus workers collected 16 abandoned bikes this year at the end of the spring semester, university spokeswoman Jenny Hill said.
Bicycles in good riding condition then become part of the school’s Otterbikes bicycle rental program. The program, which currently includes 26 bikes, is run through Otterbein’s Courtwright Memorial Library, with the Westerville Bike Shop maintaining the bikes, Hill said. Any student, faculty or staff member can pay a $5 deposit per semester to be eligible to check out a bike for up to a week.