The green movement isn't showing any signs of slowing at UF. Unfortunately, this may spell disaster for many pink-bellied beach cruisers who lack the 21-speed savvy of seasoned cyclists.
UF is thinking about implementing a $200,000 campus-wide bike rental program. The new program would allow students to rent bicycles to ride around campus for part of a day, with a Gator 1 Card being the only student requirement.
On the surface, this idea sounds convenient and wonderful; however, a serious problem lurks below this cheerful façade.
Such a bicycle rental service may curb the use of cars on campus, but it would certainly increase bicycle congestion levels simultaneously. While this may sound like a fair trade-off because of reduced gas consumption and carbon emissions, you can't forget to account for increased - well, um, we're not sure. We can't really find a downside to this program.
We would complain about the cost, but a small fee would have the program paid off in about four years.
What if students decided not to return their rental bicycles? That won't be a problem because each one will be fitted with a chip to record who rented which bicycle.
We thought we would complain about an increase in bicycle-related accidents, but it's likely that people are going to be crashing left and right regardless of a bike rental program.
There are plenty of university and city vehicles to go around in terms of students being clipped off their bicycles. Some cyclists even manage to fall without being clunked into by a 1991 Dodge Ram.
The Editorial Board (downers that we are) did everything we could to find the negativity in this proposal, and we failed miserably. Our only hope is for this program to be implemented soon so we can stop walking everywhere like a bunch of suckers.
