SPIN, a bike-sharing company based in San Francisco, is bringing a fleet of 100 bright orange rental bikes to Calvin’s campus for students, staff and faculty to enjoy.

These bikes will be stationed around campus at the following locations: the Prince Conference Center, Lot 2, Lot 13, the Knollcrest East apartments, each of the dorms and the Kalsbeek-Huizenga-van Reken parking lot.

This program comes at no cost to Calvin, aside from a patron rental fee. Members of the Calvin community can rent for $0.50 every half hour or $14 for a month of unlimited half-hour rides. Guests can also take advantage of the cheap transportation for $1 every half hour. SPIN provides the bikes and covers maintenance, marketing and operation costs.

The cost of the SPIN bikes is a fair price relative to bike-sharing programs in large cities, most of which range from $2-$4 for every half hour, according to a study done by Downtown Grand Rapids Inc.

On other campuses in the area, such as Grand Valley State University, students can rent bikes for $5 a week or $25 for a semester. However, this may not be an advantageous approach for Calvin’s campus, which is about a third of the size of Grand Valley campuses, according to their respective websites.

“SPIN is cheaper for students who only need the occasional bike to get from point A to point B and do not want to spend $5 to rent it for up to 7 days,” said Kieran Valk, sophomore and student senate vice president.

SPIN contacted the campus involvement office and student senate at the end of the fall 2017 semester. Since then, senate and the administration have been working to provide an affordable, environmentally friendly way to travel.

“We felt that Calvin’s campus was a great place for us to deploy bikes,” said Christopher King, the campus partnership manager at SPIN. “The enthusiasm that was initially shown by the senate made us excited to pursue a partnership. We love a campus that is vibrant and ready to embrace a new way to get around.”

Each bike will be outfitted with a solar-powered GPS smart lock, a bluetooth connection, foam tires, a basket and a front light. Students can access bikes through the SPIN app, which provides a QR code that can be used to unlock the bike. Because the bikes are free-standing, there is no need to lock into a particular bike rack; the user may park the bike in any legal spot. Bikes will be returned to their proper places by students who have been hired as bike operations managers.

This is not the first time bikes have graced Calvin’s sidewalks. The first senate bike rental program was initiated in 2010 with college-owned bikes. Despite constant adjustments of rental times, pricing and incentives, the initiative ended in 2016 due to bike abuse. According to Valk, bikes were stolen, found on top of buildings and in trees and thrown in the Seminary Pond.

In addition to the expensive repairs and stolen bikes, there were not enough students renting to justify keeping the program.

“We were only renting to maybe 30 people, which is a pretty small number in a school of 4000,” said Paul Kluitenberg, an alumnus that helped run the program. “While those people really benefited from the program, it was hard to justify keeping it going when student Senate was losing a decent amount of money.”

Student Senate hopes this time will be different, as SPIN bikes can use their GPS locks to prevent theft. SPIN also partners with local bike shops for repairs; if the bike is beyond fixing, it is recycled.

“Student senate is very excited for this project to be ready for students to use as soon as they get back from spring break,” said Valk. “We hope students will take advantage of the bikes for exercise and get off campus instead of using cars.”