Every year, students request that Brandeis offer some sort of bike-sharing program. In March 2009, DeisBikes was created as an initiative between students in the Student Union and Environmental Studies Professor Laura Goldin’s “Greening the Ivory Tower” class. After three separate attempts at student-run initiatives that were mostly ineffective, Mary Fischer, manager of sustainability programs, took the idea in a different direction: working with an external company, LimeBikes.

Fischer has been at Brandeis for three years and has been helping the university become more sustainable and energy-efficient with the help of facilities staff. Some of the projects she has worked on include the installation of LED lights in the Shapiro Campus Center (SCC), composting initiatives and electric charging stations.

With the desire from students to start up another bike-sharing program, Fischer began to look into working with an external company about a year ago. The company Fischer chose was the same that the city of Waltham and other surrounding cities decided to use as their bike-sharing partner. LimeBikes’ trial with Brandeis began Oct. 18 with 15 pedal bikes distributed in four locations on campus: Usdan, the Village, the SCC, and Charles River. By Oct. 23, there were only five LimeBikes left on campus. Every few weeks, LimeBikes will redistribute the bikes so that some are still on campus.

LimeBikes works through an app connected to your credit card, where you unlock the bikes with the code on your phone. Each half hour of riding costs 50 cents for students and a dollar for the public. Your first ride is also free. As a part of the trial, LimeBikes will use data from their app to see how often Brandeis students use the bikes and how effective they are on campus.

“Across the country and really around the world, bike sharing is becoming more and more popular, and there’s new technology that companies have been using to allow people to share bikes and specifically without having to dock it at a bike station,” Fischer said.

Boston is famous for its Hubway bicycle stations, where bikes can be picked up from a dock but need to be returned to another dock. LimeBikes, however, can be picked up and dropped off at any location, making them perfect for college students especially. Fischer asks that students take care to leave their bikes near racks and other designated spots, as one bike was left on the pathway to the SCC in the past week and could not be relocated without purchasing a ride, making it difficult for students to get by.

As of right now, Fischer does not know how long the trial with LimeBikes will last. “We don’t have a set time, we want to see what happens… the weather is going to dictate a lot of it,” said Fischer. For example, if there is snowfall of two inches or more, the company would most likely remove the bikes, depending on how heavily used the bikes are.

Aaron Finkel ’20, who is on the outreach committee of the Student Union, worked together with Fischer to compose an email sent out to students advertising the new bike sharing program. LimeBikes also came to campus on Oct. 24 to spread information and give out discount codes and coupons. Grace Agosto, an employee of LimeBikes, spoke to The Hoot and said “We’re super happy to be here on campus and at Brandeis, we have released a few of our bikes here and we’re happy to see the students already using them.”

“Not everyone wants to own a bike and have to maintain it, so it’s making biking more accessible to everyone,” said Fischer. She also mentioned that if the pedal bikes are popular, they may consider bringing electric assisted e-bikes to campus as well, which may be of further help for students who live off campus to reduce the amount of driving back and forth.

“When we first placed the bikes we were watching the app, we had [the bikes] used within the first 15 mins that they were placed and two or three more within an hour… it’ll be interesting to see the usage patterns and what happens,” said Fischer.

If you are looking for a faster and inexpensive way to get around campus, LimeBikes might be the solution for you.