Twist of Lime on wheels at UCF
The bike share program has been popular on the college campus.
John Hitt retired as president of the University of Central Florida earlier this year, closing out his storied era just before UCF welcomed an epoch of another sort, an invasion of rental bikes.
On a recent afternoon, the legendary president and the upand-comer mode of transportation appeared side by side, at least in name. A building emblazoned as the John C. Hitt Library loomed over a trio of randomly parked Lime bikes available for 50 cents per 30-minute ride.
But there also were Lime bikes behind the library, next to the student union, in open spaces, at the front door of the engineering building and within sight of just about everywhere in the campus core. At 700 strong, they are likely to increase still further.
Asked to comment on the ubiquitous travel mode, a woman pedaling one said: “I’m late for class.”
Senior Nick Groos likes that he can grab one nearly anywhere after a Knights football game and leave it nearly anywhere.
Unlike other versions of share bikes, those at UCF do not depend on being locked to a dedicated bike rack. As a result, they are parked via kickstands on sidewalks, individually, neatly in clusters and scattered among privately owned bikes.
Junior Emil Polkowski sees no convenience for him from Lime bikes. And he’s wondering how long campus officials will allow the bikes to be a source of visual litter.
That is a leading concern at college campuses, urban areas and elsewhere with high numbers of share bikes.
“Honestly, they are becoming a mess,” Polkowski said. “I saw a pile of these bikes.”
School officials are calling the rental bikes a surprising success, especially as they arrived only at the start of this semester.
The student rate of 50 cents per ride is a discount from the standard $1 per 30-minute ride. The system works via student registration with a phone app that then enables the bikes to be rented.
A chief reason the bikes were invited onto campus was to reduce driving – and emissions of climate-changing pollution – at a school where traffic is heavy and parking is a challenge.
To what extent the bikes have